


Fixation

by Lovers_Reason



Category: Bourne Legacy (2012)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Discussion of rape/non-con, F/M, Moral Ambiguity, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-02
Updated: 2013-01-18
Packaged: 2017-11-13 10:06:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 24,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/502314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lovers_Reason/pseuds/Lovers_Reason
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A different beginning to the movie, where Aaron's superiors realize that he has a bit of a thing for his doctor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place before the burning of Outcome, and totally cuts off the story from any relation it might have had to the original trilogy. 
> 
> Trigger warning for rape, but although it is discussed and threatened, no rape actually occurs in the story.

Aaron followed the man into a bare room with another door at the other end and two baskets. He wasn’t even sure who he was following, but it was a superior officer and that was all that mattered.

“Strip naked,” said the man, which took Aaron by surprise. He didn’t show it, of course, just began doing as told. “Put your clothes in one of those baskets and then go through that door. Wait there for further instruction.”

“Yes, sir.”

Aaron did as he was told, folding his clothes neatly before putting them in one of the baskets. He opened the door to find—not what he was expecting. It was a cell, with a heavy door and surveillance cameras, but it was strangely dim. It was lit by lamps, even though there was a switch for the fluorescent lights in the ceiling. And there was a bed, very comfortably made up and totally at odds with the white walls and tile of the room. It looked like someone had tried, and not tried very hard at that, to make a containment cell more comfortable.

He sat on the bed to wait and tried not to let his unease show.

~*~

“Thank you so much for coming, Dr. Shearing.”

“Can I ask why I’m here?” Marta tried not to sound too irritated, but Lt. Colonel Banks had pulled her away from some delicate testing and her whole schedule was going to be messed up now. But when the head of your program says jump, well…

“We have some questions about the health of one of our operatives. Specifically his sexual health.”

She blinked, surprised. “That’s not my field of expertise. You should consult—“

“You have a medical doctorate in addition to your Ph.D.”

“I do, but that’s—“

“You do function as the medical examiner for the operatives.”

“Yes—“

“Then please, just listen.” His tone left no room for argument. “One of our operatives has developed a… fixation. Sexually. On a particular woman. He wants her, and our psych evals show he thinks about her much more than he ought to, given the nature of their relationship, which up to this point has been… clinical.”

Something about Lt. Colonel Banks’ tone was putting Marta on edge. Though nothing showed on his face, there seemed to be a small smile in his voice, a hint of amusement that she really didn’t like.

“But recently it has come to our attention that this operative has disobeyed orders on numerous occasions to see this woman, and that is unacceptable. So we’re asking for your advice about what actions might be taken.”

“Have these two had sex?”

“We are fairly certain they have not.”

“Well, it’s not my area of expertise, and you really should ask a psychologist, but it sounds like he’s fixating because he can’t have her.”

“So the problem would be solved if they had intercourse?”

“If the fixation is purely sexual, then it’s likely.”

“Thank you, Dr. Shearing, that’s exactly what I needed to hear. Now, if you wouldn’t mind following me.”

“How long is this going to take? I have sensitive experiments underway in my lab.”

They were walking down a hallway now, flanked by two soldiers carrying guns.

“Well, Doctor, that’s up to you. If you’re… cooperative, then this shouldn’t take long at all.”

The hint of amusement was back, and Marta was liking it less and less. She opened her mouth to ask what that meant, when they arrived at their destination. Banks opened the door and let her into a room that was almost totally bare except for two baskets. She walked in, followed closely by the other three men.

“Okay, Dr. Shearing, I want you to take a moment to remember the contract you signed to us, because you aren’t going to like what I tell you to do next. Take off your clothes.”

“ _What?_ ”

“You said yourself that the solution to our operative’s sexual fixation is intercourse with the woman in question.”

“You mean… you meant… me? You expect me to… There is no way…” Marta was sputtering, infuriated. “You set me up. You manipulated me into saying… _No!_ No, I absolutely, categorically refuse.”

“I am afraid you don’t have a choice. Five has become dangerously attached, to the point of disobeying orders. We will take whatever steps necessary to insure that our operatives are not compromised.”

“Five,” Marta murmured, remembering a man with strong hands and kind eyes, who flirted clumsily and always left her sessions a bit more cheerful than he had come in. She was surprised. She knew he liked her, but she would never have guessed that she was the object of his infatuation. He had always been respectful, keeping his eyes on her face and his hands to himself. She actually had received better treatment from him than from some of the men she worked with every day. She could hardly believe that he was to be her rapist.

“What do you mean, he’s disobeyed orders to see me? I’ve never seen him outside the examination room.”

“On numerous occasions he has deliberately failed to send in his blood work so that he is required to have a full check-up. With you.”

Marta was silent, trying desperately to think of a way out of this.

“Are you going to force me to do this? At gunpoint?”

“If I must.”

“You understand that this is rape, right?”

“You will be compensated.”

Marta gave a hollow, hysterical laugh. “And you think that makes it okay? You think that will make it right?” She was crying now.

“I have no illusions that there is anything right about this. It is necessary. Now, please, Doctor, I really must insist. Take off your clothes.”

She took a few gasping breaths, trying to get her tears under control. “You won’t… you can’t shoot me.” She looked helplessly at the stony faces of the other soldiers. “I’m necessary to the program.”

“I can’t pretend your death won’t set our research back, but you are not vital. There are many other qualified people who could take your place. And your death would certainly fix our problems with Cross. With Five.”

Shaking, silent tears streaming down her face, she looked into the eyes of all three men and didn’t see a drop of compassion in any of them. “Please,” she whispered. “Please don’t do this.”

The two soldiers raised their guns.

~*~

Aaron was still sitting on the bed when he heard voices in the room outside. They were muffled through the heavy door, but he heard a woman shout, “No!” He wanted to get up to see what was happening, but his orders had been to stay put. So he did. There was a few more minutes of voices, and then the door opened, and someone was shoved through.

It was Dr. Shearing. And she was… naked. And sobbing. The door shut quickly behind her, and locked solidly. The woman looked around the room, clearly terrified.

“Doc?” He stood up, about to move toward her, but she pressed herself against the door, cowering away from him, and sobbed even harder. Him. She was terrified of him. Distress and worry lanced through Aaron’s chest. She was trying desperately to cover her naked body, and so he did the first thing he could think of to help. He turned around and ripped the comforter off the bed he had been sitting on. When he stepped toward her, she squeaked and sank to the ground, drawing her knees to her chest.

“Hey, hey,” he said gently, setting it on the floor and holding his hands up. “I’m not gonna hurt you.” He bent down and shoved the comforter across the floor to her. Tentatively, she reached for it, then after a second of staring at him, she quickly wrapped it around herself.

“Not going to hurt me?” she said, managing to sound sarcastic even through her tears. “What, did they tell you I was a willing participant in this?”

“This? What do you mean? They didn’t tell me anything, just to sit in this room and wait until someone comes.”

Dr. Shearing’s sobs were quieting a bit into hiccups, but she was still eyeing him with fear. Almost as an afterthought, Aaron pulled the top sheet off the bed to cover himself. Normally he was totally unfazed by nudity, even around others, but the Doctor was… different. He felt the need to protect her. She was delicate. Fragile. And standing naked in front of her—it felt like disrespect.

When he wrapped the sheet around his naked form, she seemed to relax just a hair. “You really… you really don’t know what’s happening?” She looked at him with a strange mix of concern and suspicion.

He shook his head. She opened her mouth, presumably to explain, then closed it again. Her brow furrowed, and Aaron tried not to pay attention to how adorable that was.

“I’m trying to think of the least… humiliating way to explain it. For both of us.” She was quiet another minute. “It has come to your superiors’ attention that you, um… like me.” Aaron blanched. He could see where this was headed, and it was a bad, bad place. “Well, they called it a fixation. A… sexual fixation. And since you disobeyed orders and didn’t send blood work in so you could see me,” her voice was rising, anger filling the hollow of fear and distress, “they think you need to be ‘cured.’ And I guess it’s obvious how they think that’s going to happen.”

It was obvious. Two naked people and a bed in a room with a locked door was pretty damn obvious. Aaron looked at the floor, humiliated and afraid. And she wasn’t done. “So, whatever you’re going to do, please do it soon-“ her voice cracked: the brave front she was putting up was pretty damn thin. “Soon, because I need to get back to work.”

Aaron looked up in shock. “I’m not… Jesus, Doc, I’m not going to do anything. Do you really think I would… that I would rape you?”

She met his eyes warily. “I’ve got no reason to believe you wouldn’t. I barely know you. The only thing I know about you is that you want me. And that you kill people for a living.” He flinched. That was true, but it was a brutal assessment of their relationship.

“Well, I wouldn’t. I would never rape anyone, least of all you. I mean, you’re beautiful. And I think about you a lot more than I should, and I guess I mentioned you a few too many times during my psych evals, but that’s all the more reason…” He paused. “I don’t want you like this. Ashamed, afraid, that’s not… I’m not an animal,” he finished quietly.

She looked at him for a moment. “I’m sorry,” she said softly.

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I shouldn’t have presumed…”

“You were afraid. You were forced to take your clothes off at gunpoint; I really can’t blame you for assuming.”

She trembled under the comforter, and wrapped it tighter around herself. They sat silently like that for an indeterminable stretch of time.

“What do we do now?” she asked.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooh, got surprisingly good feedback about this, thanks everybody! Here's a same-day update to thank you!
> 
> As I'm writing this story, I'm realizing that I like Aaron Cross loads better when he's not pissed at Marta.

_“Any progress?”_

_“Negative, sir. They appear to be trying to wait us out.”_

_“Has Dr. Crane arrived?”_

_“Yes, sir.”_

_“Put him on the phone.”_

_…_

_“Crane.”_

_“What’s the status of the S.A.I. drug?”_

_“It exists, but has not been thoroughly tested and has potential to interfere with the mental enhancements in operatives.”_

_“That’s alright. I don’t plan to use it on an operative.”_

~*~

“So, they’re going to keep us in here until… what? Until we starve to death? Die of boredom? I would have thought they’d have given us a more concrete incentive.”

“They probably didn’t think we’d need an incentive. Or, at least,” Aaron’s voice was tight with fury, “that I would need an incentive.”

They sat on opposite sides of the room, stewing in righteous anger, until Marta suddenly burst out, “What the fuck is happening right now?!” Aaron started. They hadn’t spent that much time together, but he’d never pictured her as someone who cursed.

“I mean, I’m just a scientist! How did I end up naked and locked in a cell with a total stranger? This is just surreal. What is going on?” She was degenerating back into hysterics. “Who the hell are these people? I thought I worked for the Department of Defense; in what universe does the American government force employees to be prostitutes?” She looked directly at the security camera in the corner. “Who the hell do you think you are? Did you think I would be okay with this? That I would have sex with a man who’s name I don’t even know while you watched?” She deflated against the door again.

“Wait, wh- Seriously? You don’t know my name? You’re my doctor.”

She shrugged. “I was never told. They want to keep it clinical.”

“What do you put on my blood work? In my file?”

“Five.”

“Five, like the number? That’s all I get?”

Her eyes flashed. “Don’t you _dare_ get angry at me for being too detached. In case you didn’t notice, we’re in this situation because _you_ weren’t detached enough.”

He closed his mouth. “You’re right,” he said after a minute. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said softly. “You can’t help how you feel. It’s not you I’m angry at, not really. Actually, in a ridiculous way, I guess I’m kind of… flattered? That you broke rules just to see me.” She offered him a small smile, which he returned shyly. “Don’t— please don’t hold me to this,” she stuttered out, her voice small, “because I haven’t decided yet, but if I… if I said yes? If I agreed to sleep with you, would you be… gentle?”

Aaron closed his eyes against the wave of mental images her words brought to mind; thoughts of worshipping every inch of her skin, using just his hands and his mouth to work her up to the edge again and again.

“If you said yes… I would still say no.”

“What?” She sounded shocked.

He opened his eyes to meet hers and gave her a wry smile. “Don’t I get a say, too, Doc?”

“Of course,” she said, blushing. “I just thought… well, they told me…”

“It wouldn’t make a difference whether you said yes or not. You’re locked in a room, naked, and been told you can’t leave until you have sex. You know what capacity for consent is? You don’t have it right now. It would still be rape, and I won’t… I won’t do that to you.”

They were both silent for a moment. “Thank you,” she said.

“Don’t thank me yet; we might both die because of this.”

Her bottom lip quivered, but she looked resolute. “I still appreciate it.”

Minutes of silence passed. Then he spoke up. “Aaron, by the way. That’s my name. Aaron Cross.”

“Marta Shearing,” she replied. They shared another tiny smile, and his lips formed her first name silently, privately.

Another moment of silence, but this one wasn’t interrupted by one of their voices. Instead, there was a hissing sound, followed by a gas seeping out of the vents that were at floor level.

“What is—?”

“Hold your breath!” Aaron said quickly. Marta did as she was told. Aaron took a quick, tiny breath in and closed his eyes against a wave of dizziness.

“Knockout gas,” he said softly, using as little of the air in his lungs as possible. Marta’s eyes widened with fear. He sprang up and over to the door, kneeling next to the keypad and kicking himself for not trying this earlier. He had only a few minutes of air before he would need to breathe again, and Marta had even less than that. Their only hope was for him to hack the lock and get them out.

It was tough, a card-reader, which meant his only hope was going at the hardware between the reader and the lock. He looked around for something to cut the glue where it was held to the wall. His eyes fell on Marta, who was still just a few feet away from him and clearly struggling to hold her breath. He held his hands up and looked her in the eye, giving her a look that said, ‘I’m about to do something, don’t get scared,’ then he reached a hand into her hair and stole one of her bobby pins.

Aaron broke the bobby pin in half and pushed the sharp end of one half into the glue, then began trying to slice through the seal. It was slow work, and he had barely gotten a few inches before he felt Marta slump, passed out from the gas. He estimated that he had four and a half minutes before he would be forced to breathe, or risk passing out anyway from asphyxiation. He had considered faking unconciousness until somone came in the room, but there was a high probability that whoever was monitoring them was watching the readouts from his implant, making that impossible.

Four minutes later, there were spots floating in his vision and he slammed his hand into the card-reader fruitlessly. He had been trained not to let frustration affect his performance, but he could not see a way out, and there was a very real chance that the next person through that door would be there to kill Marta. Because of him. He beat against the door, just as the last of his breath ran out and he slumped helplessly against it.

~*~

Marta woke up. Which was somewhat of a surprise in itself. She woke up with her head throbbing, feeling slightly feverish, but she woke up.

There was a flush on her skin, and Marta started to get up, to throw off the blanket she was wrapped in, when she remembered Aaron. She looked around quickly. He was there, awake, against the door, and they were still in the same room. It seemed like nothing had changed. But then, why…

“You alright, there, Doc?” She blinked, trying to throw off the haze.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay. What happened?”

“Don’t know,” he replied, eyes tight with worry. “You sure you feel okay?”

“My head hurts, from the gas, I assume. And I feel a little… hot.” She was wrapped tightly in the same comforter, more tightly than she had been before, and it struck her that Aaron must have carried her to the bed. Using one arm to hold the top of the blanket up over her chest, she pushed it loose on the side toward the wall, allowing a draft to play over her skin. She leaned back to put her weight on the same arm, when suddenly,

“Ow!”

“What?” Aaron was up immediately, moving over to her. “What is it?”

Marta looked down at the place where there had been a small but unexpected pinch. There, against the pale skin of her inner elbow, was a tiny red dot. A needle mark. Fear gripped her chest, and she looked up into Aaron’s eyes, where her worry was mirrored in his face.

“What… what did they do to me?”

“I don’t know... Doc. Dr. Shearing,” he said urgently, fighting through the roar of fear in her ears. “Marta, I need you to focus. How. do. you. feel?”

“I feel…” she started, trying to gulp down the terror of having some unknown substance coursing through her veins, put there by people who had no qualms about seeing her raped or dead. “I feel… warm. Is it warm in here?” She looked at him, crouched beside her. His hands were clenched on the bed, like he was holding himself back from touching her.

“No. It’s actually pretty chilly, that’s part of the reason I wrapped you up. You do look a little flushed, though, may I?” He gestured toward her forehead.

“Yes,” she replied, and he laid a hand gently on her skin. Suddenly Marta felt an intense flash of feeling go through her.

“Shit,” she whispered.

“What?”

“I know what the drug did to me.”

“What?”

She reached up to the hand on her forehead and wrapped her fingers around his wrist. Then, without even giving her body permission, she was dragging that hand downward, over her cheek, her jaw, her neck.

“Marta, what are you…?”

“I want you, Aaron.”

His eyes went wide, and he sucked in a shocked breath. Then he yanked his arm out of her grip and practically threw himself across the room.

“No!” she cried, genuinely devastated to have lost his touch.

“Those bastards,” he said under his breath. “Those total fucking bastards.”

Marta was working on disentangling herself from the blankets.

“Dr. Shearing, please, you don’t want this. You know you don’t, just think! Remember the last two hours; remember what they did to you.”

She did remember, it just didn’t matter; nothing mattered but getting Aaron’s hand’s back on her body.

“Marta, for the love of God, please stay under that blanket. Please don’t get up from that bed.”

But he couldn’t touch her if she stayed away from him. She stood up, the blanket falling away and revealing her totally naked, and she smiled at the look in his eyes, the want that was bleeding through the desperation. His gaze flicked over her body like he just couldn’t help himself, and he probably couldn’t. He closed his eyes in shame, and Marta moved toward him, needing to wipe that shame away and replace it with desire.

“Aaron, don’t worry. I want this. And you want it too, so what else matters?”

“You don’t, you don’t want this,” he said, eyes still closed. “It’s a drug in your system. The drug, remember?”

“Don’t be silly, of course I want this. You’re so beautiful, and you were so kind to me, how could I not?” She was right up next to him now, standing naked over him where he was sitting up against the wall. She dropped to her knees, straddling his legs, then pressed herself against him.

She barely even had a second to enjoy the heat of his skin against hers before he stood up forcefully, pushing her away.

“No!” he said, moving away from her. She reached for him, and though he got away, he wasn’t quite quick enough to stop her from getting hold of the sheet he’d tucked neatly around his waist, pulling it away.

He turned to face her, and his hands dropped to cover himself, but not before she saw that he was hard. She smiled triumphantly and stalked toward him.

“Want you to touch me, Aaron,” she said in the sultriest voice she could muster. “Want your hands, your mouth, your cock.” She was cornering him, thanks to his reluctance to touch her, which was keeping him from shoving past her. “Want to feel you inside me, filling me up.” His eyes were fixed on hers, and his pupils were blown so wide there was hardly any blue left, but still he backed up. Finally, he hit another wall and pressed himself against it.

“Please, please stop, Marta. I can’t… I can’t think when you talk like that.”

“Don’t want you to think,” she replied, moving right in front of him. Her hand reached out to his bare chest. “Want you to fuck me.” With lightning reflexes, he grabbed her wrist. They were both breathing hard now, and for a second they just stared at each other, waiting for his next move. Then, in a flash of movement that startled and excited her, he suddenly had her flipped around and pinned against the wall by her shoulders.

“Yes,” she breathed. The look in his eyes sent a delicious tremor down her spine, but they still weren’t touching anywhere but his hands on her arms. She arched forward and felt the head of his cock brush against her belly, which made her shudder with arousal. For his part, Aaron gasped and jerked his hips backward, away from her. Then he braced one forearm across her shoulders and looked her intently in the eye.

“Doc, I am so, so sorry about this.”

And he pressed his other hand over her nose and mouth, cutting off her air.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Aaron Cross gets down to business. Specifically, the business of kicking ass.

Marta woke up. Again. She jerked awake this time, not hampered by a drug, and encouraged by residual fear from when she had fallen unconscious.

~*~

_“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, this is the least painful way I know to knock you out, I’m sorry.”_

_Her heart rate, which had picked up when he touched her, was now through the roof. Her lust had turned to fear when she realized he wasn’t going to let her breathe, and her hands which had been caressing were now scrabbling for purchase. She met his gaze, and the last thought she had before passing out was that there was genuine remorse in his eyes._

~*~

“Dr. Shearing, are you alright?”

Aaron had been kneeling at the door, but when she sat up he moved over to her. She recoiled from him instinctually and he froze. His eyes were clouded with guilt.

“Please, are you okay?” he asked, without coming any closer.

“I- yes, I think I’m alright.” She was wrapped in the same blanket as before, but it was soaked through with sweat. She shivered.

“Are you still feeling… warm?”

He was asking if she still felt the affects of the arousal inducer drug. She let herself take in his form, covered modestly in a sheet again, and realized that although she could still appreciate his attractiveness objectively, she didn’t have the urge to pounce on him anymore.

Then, all in a rush, she remembered how she’d acted while on the drug, and a wave of intense humiliation overtook her, even worse than she’d felt when this whole thing started.

“Oh my god,” she whispered, drawing her knees up to her chest and laying her head on them. A few more tears leaked from her eyes.

There was a pause, and then he spoke again, very cautiously, still at the same respectful distance. “Mar- Dr. Shearing, please. I need to know if you’re okay.”

“I’m- uh,” she paused to sniff. “I’m really, really not. But the affects of the drug are gone. And I’m not hurt, I’m just…” She wiped her eyes. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

“Okay,” he said, nodding and looking solemn. “Okay.”

He backed up, went back to the door where Marta now noticed that the keypad was hanging from the wall by a tangle of wires.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Trying to save our lives.”

She got up, tugging the blanket around herself, and walked over to see what he was doing. He had yanked several of the wires out of their housing in the box and was currently working on twisting the ends of two of them together.

“What, you’re trying to get the door open?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

She raised an eyebrow at him, but didn’t ask what that meant. Instead, she asked the more pressing question.

“You know there are men out there, right? With guns?”

“I can fight them.”

She scoffed a bit. “And then what? Once we get past them, what do we do?”

The look he gave her was a mix of incredulity and pity.

“We run.”

“Run? Like, run from the government? The military? Is that really the best option here? Surely if we just—“

“Listen,” he said sharply, dropping what he was doing to turn to her. “These people can’t let you live. You know too much, and they’ve made a huge mistake throwing you in here, and this is the kind of organization that burns its mistakes to the ground. And they can’t let me live either, because after doing this to you… I’m not on their side anymore.” He raised his voice for the last part and looked directly at the camera in the corner. “The only reason we’re alive right now is that they’ve been arguing over what to do with us. Our only choice is to run. To get out of the country, to drop off the grid, and to stay there. It’s that, or let them kill you right now.”

The look in his eyes was fierce, a challenge, and if there was anything Marta knew how to do, it was rise to a challenge. She took a deep, steadying breath.

“What can I do?”

He grinned. “Go disable that camera. Rip out the wires, take it apart, do whatever you have to.”

She stood up, and he turned back to his work. She walked over to the camera, which was mounted on the ceiling in the corner. Disabling it didn’t sound hard in theory, but looking at it, she couldn’t even reach the thing. She looked around the room, and her gaze landed on one of the lamps. She had forgotten about them, the half-hearted attempt to add ambience which really just made her angrier. The ceiling lights had been on ever since she woke up from the knock out gas.

Marta picked up the biggest lamp, a floor lamp with a nice heavy base, and carried it over to the corner. She hefted it up and brought the base down onto the security camera with a very satisfying smash. The camera came loose from the wall and hung down low enough for her to grab hold of it and pull with all her weight.

The wires pulled loose and the camera came away in her hands, where she then threw it at the ground with gusto. A little unnecessary, perhaps, but very enjoyable.

“Good job,” Aaron said with approval. She turned to see him surveying her, the wall, and the mass of electronics at her feet with a measure of respect, and maybe even a little pride. Then he was kneeling, pulling apart the remains of the camera. “Ah, and this is exactly what I need.” He held up a piece of the camera mount, a wide flat bit of metal that used to be attached to the side, before the side was reduced to so many shards of plastic.

Aaron knelt next to one of the vents and beckoned her over. He showed her how to use the metal like a screwdriver to take the covers off the vents, then returned to the door. It was hard work, and it cut her hands up before she figured out how to wrap the comforter around the edges, but eventually she managed to get all three vents open.

“Okay, I’m done,” she called to him. “Why did I need to do that?” Marta was actually shocked at herself for not asking that question much earlier. She hadn’t even realized how much she trusted Aaron until just now.

“One sec,” he replied, one hand groping around for something inside the wall. “Ha!” he said triumphantly, and then tugged something about the size of a matchbox out of the hole, yanking it loose.

The door remained shut.

“Oh, no,” said Marta, despairing. If they couldn’t get the door open this was all pointless anyway.

“What?” he asked, looking at her.

“Well, it didn’t work.”

“Course it did. Wasn’t trying to get it open. Hang on,” he said, cutting off her next question. He stepped over to one of the table lamps and reached inside the shade. He pulled out a tiny… something. A black bit of plastic, it looked like. He set it on the table, picked up the lamp, and smashed it.

“Bug,” he said quickly. “Hopefully the only one; I’m banking on the fact that they didn’t plan on this going this badly. Now, you had a question.”

“Two, actually. What were you doing to the door, and why did I need to take the covers off the vents?”

“I fixed the door so they can’t open it easily from the outside, and you-“

“Wait, what? You locked us in? I mean, you locked us in more?”

“To buy us time. They would have been waiting for us on the other side, but now they have to come to us, which means we have the advantage. They can only come through the door one at a time, and we’ll have some warning before they get through.”

“They’re still going to have guns.”

“We take every possible advantage we can, Doc. No matter how small. That’s how we’re going to get out of this.”

“Okay. And the vents?”

“Well, here, look.” He pulled the fitted sheet off the bed, the last piece of bedding left that they weren’t wearing, and took the metal she had been using as a screwdriver. He used it to cut through the elastic on the edge of the sheet, and then tore the sheet in half. Then he wadded up one half and shoved it into the vent. As he worked he talked to her.

“The first thing they’re going to try to do is knock us out again. Or possibly even poison us. This will stop that from happening, at least with the gas.”

She picked up the other half of the fitted sheet and began stuffing it into another vent. Aaron then ripped off the bottom half of the sheet he was wearing for the third vent, and they were done. Not two minutes later there was the familiar hiss of the gas valves. He grinned at her.

“Okay,” she said, the purposefulness wearing off and giving way to fear again. “What now?”

He surveyed the room. Then he moved over to the bed and lifted it, then he wedged a foot underneath it and turned it on its side. He then picked it up like it weighed far less than she knew it had to, and carried it to the opposite side of the room. Marta took a second to admire his strength, and felt a bit of pride that that strength was mostly thanks to her. He moved the bed until all four feet were up against the wall, making a kind of bunker.

“Okay, the door opens this way,” he said, gesturing. “Which means they’re going to come in at this angle, making the safest place in the room right here.” He pointed to where he had put the bed. “You’re going to lay down behind the bed. It’s a metal frame, not enough to help if someone really tries to shoot you, but it has the potential to stop a stray bullet.”

Marta sucked in a breath, trying to calm herself down. She had done so well when she had a task to focus on, but now, with nothing to do but consider the reality that someone was about to try and kill her, fear was taking over again. And suddenly there was a thud at the door.

“I hate to ask this of you, but the first thing they’re going to do when they get that door open is roll a gas canister in here. I’m going to kick it over to you; I need you to wrap it up in that blanket, tight as you can, and try not to breathe it in.” There was another thud outside the door, louder this time. She let out a tiny squeak of fear.

Aaron seemed to step away from mission mode for just a moment, turning to her. “Marta,” he said softly, looking her in the eye. “I am going to do everything I possibly can to get you out of this alive. But in case we die… I just want you to know how sorry I am. This is my fault, and…” his voice faltered. He reached a hand up toward her face, then seemed to realize what he was doing and stopped, clenching it into a fist. “I never wanted anything to happen to you; I’ve always wanted to protect you, ever since the day I met you.”

Marta looked into Aaron’s eyes, a bit startled by this confession, and by the depth of feeling in his voice. She was starting to think that sexual fixation didn’t even begin to cover what he had for her. Another thud broke them from their reverie, and on this one the door buckled visibly. Aaron gestured for her to move over toward the bed.

“Aaron,” she said, wrapping her fingers around his wrist. He started, then looked down where she was touching him with wide eyes. She waited for him to meet her gaze, then said with as much conviction as she could muster, “I forgive you.”

His face filled with a whole range of emotions: relief, gratitude, determination, and a few more besides. “Thank you,” he said, equally sincere, then like the flipping of a switch he was back in mission mode. He waved at her to get behind the bed. “Don’t forget to grab the gas canister.” She quickly pulled the blanket off, her modesty still thankfully protected by the mattress. There was another thud. “Get ready.”

There was a crash, then the sound of metal on the floor and a hiss. Marta heard Aaron kick the canister over to her. Perfect aim, of course: the thing landed right beside the bed, within arms reach. She pounced on it with the comforter, wrapping it up as much as she could. She got a whiff of the gas that made her dizzy, and then she tucked her head under her arms.

She tried not to scream when the gunfire started, and she thought she succeeded but there was no way to be sure. Instead she focused on the sounds of fighting. Fighting was good; there was only one of Aaron, so if there was still fighting then he was still alive.

It seemed to go on forever: the gunfire, the snapping of bones, the sound of bodies colliding with floors and and walls and other bodies.

Finally, improbably, it was over. There was a second of silence, and the sound of one person breathing hard. And then, miraculously:

“Doc? You okay?”

“Yes!” she called out automatically. And a split second later, when the reality set it, she laughed out loud. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

She peeked up over the edge of the bed, and her good humor vanished. She had known, intellectually, what was happening while she cowered behind a mattress, but that didn’t stop her from being horrified by the sight that greeted her. Aaron was standing in the center of a pile of bodies, at least a dozen men, some of them breathing, some of them…

He was had a gun in each hand and blood all over his naked body. He seemed to have discarded the sheet into the corner before the fighting started. There was also a tremendous amount of blood pouring down his arm from a slice in his shoulder.

He held a hand out to her.

“Come on,” he said urgently. “We don’t have much time.”

Marta hesitated for a split second, on account of being naked, but then kicked herself internally. _Priorities, woman_ , she thought. She stood up, and Aaron gave her a once over, but it was clearly to check for damages rather than any sexual reason. Then she took his hand, and he pulled her through the door she never thought she’d make it through alive.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's pretty heavy on the action. It's a lot more running and shooting and escaping and a lot less character interaction, but don't worry! Because in the next chapter, they're going to sit down, take a breather, and have a nice long chat.
> 
> I've had some questions about what I plan to do as the story progresses. Pretty soon now, they're going to make the decision to go to Manila, and from there the plot is going to be a lot more similar to the movie, and the only major difference will be their relationship, so I won't be writing the whole movie again, just the parts that would be different.

It took Marta a moment to pick her way through the bodies, and by the time she got into the next room Aaron was already digging through one of the hampers. He pulled out his neatly folded clothes, and used the sheet to wipe the blood off himself as much as possible.

She quit paying attention at that point, because she had gotten to the other basket, and Marta never thought she be so glad to see clothing. She dressed as quickly as she could, and had gotten her underwear and pants on and one button of her blouse done up before Aaron spoke again.

“It’ll take eleven minutes for them to get another team up here.” She turned to look at him. He had pants on but not a shirt. He seemed to be preoccupied with a rather impressive array of knives and the dogtag-shaped container which all operative wore around their necks. “We need to be gone by then.” He moved on to the men lying on the floor in the doorway, taking clips out of their guns and putting them in the cloth liner of his hamper.

“You’re… um,” she stammered. “You know you’re bleeding?” He looked up and gave her a look that said he clearly didn’t. “On your shoulder, there.” He looked down.

“Shit.” He tore off part of the sheet and began trying to bandage it, but it was awkward one-handed.

“Here, let me,” she said, taking the strip of cloth from him. She wrapped it around the wound as quickly as she could. There was too much blood to tell for sure, but it looked like a bullet graze. He talked to her while she worked.

“Once we get out the door, we’re going to have security cameras on us from every angle. The trick is going to be to confuse them, so I’m going to take the cameras out on three different routes. That shouldn’t take me more than three minutes. You wait here.” She finished tying off the bandage, and he grabbed her wrist, putting a gun in her hand. “Do you know how to use this?”

She shook her head. She had a revolver in her nightstand, but this was a Glock, and aside from pulling the trigger she had no idea how it worked.

“Okay, so this releases the clip,” he said, talking quickly. He slid the magazine out, then pushed it back in. “You cock it.” He pulled back on the top. “And then just shoot. Don’t shoot me, don’t shoot yourself. Now,” he handed her the bag he was holding and moved back to his pile of belongings. “I need you to collect the ammo from all these men’s guns while I’m gone. We’re going to need as much firepower as we can get.” He pulled on a shirt and tipped his wrist up to check his watch. “Be back in three minutes.”

She watched him open the door and peer around it, gun first. He fired a shot, and she let out a startled scream.

“Just the camera, don’t worry. Focus on getting those clips!” he yelled behind him as he ran out the door.

~*~

Three minutes was an impossibly long time.

Marta’s hands shook uncontrollably as she picked up each man’s gun, removed the magazine, and put it into the bag. She flinched every time there was a gunshot, and prayed that like the first one, they were only cameras.

Now that she had a closer look at the men in the cell and piled in the doorway, she couldn’t help but admire Aaron’s skill. Of the fourteen men, she’d only found three so far that were dead. The rest were unconcious, either from lumps on the head or bleeding out, but they would all be fine if they got medical attention in the next hour. That was good.

No, wait, that was bad. Very, very bad. Because suddenly there was a groan from behind her, and the sound of stirring. She turned around, and one of the soldiers was sitting up, reaching for his gun, and of course he would be one of the ones she hadn’t gotten to yet. Her hand tightened around the gun Aaron had given her. And then she ran into the other room.

She heard the scuffing of someone struggling to stand up, then footsteps. She raised her gun, knew what she had to do. The soldier practically fell against the doorframe, breathing hard, but he had a gun in his hand and was looking at her with purpose in his eyes.

He took another step. She hesitated. He started to raise his gun.

And then there was a bang, and the soldier crumpled to the ground with a neat hole in his head.

Marta looked at the gun in her hands, and at the dead man in front of her, and proceeded to panic. A rational part of her brain said that she shouldn’t be having this reaction. The man was going to kill her. She killed him first.

But she couldn’t breathe. Her chest burned, filled with sobs she couldn’t even breathe long enough to get out.

And then there were warm hands on her face. “Marta. Marta, listen to me. It’s alright. Okay? The worst is over. It’s all easy after this. I need you to hold it together.” Aaron pulled her to her feet like she weighed nothing at all. “Look, I want you to focus on keeping it together for the next minute. Okay, just one minute. Sixty seconds, and then you can break down all you like. You can stand anything for sixty seconds. You could even count them. Just hold it together for one minute.”

One minute. Yeah, she could do that. Just sixty seconds. As Aaron bustled around her, she counted, staved off the crying, the panic that wanted to rise to the surface. She counted the seconds, and when they were up, Aaron was standing in front of her again.

“Better?”

She thought about it. She was, actually. The counting had calmed her. The feelings were still there, but they weren’t threatening to drown her anymore. Not at the moment, at least.

“Yeah, I’m good.” He nodded his approval.

“Okay, I took out three paths; two to emergency exits and one to a common area that is currently filled with dozens of panicked civilians. We’re taking the emergency stairs on the right down to the basement.”

“The basement? How are we getting out?”

“This is D.C, there’s tunnel access in every building in this area. Once we’re down there they have no way of tracking us or knowing where we’ll surface. Are you ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

“Okay, then, let’s go.”

~*~

They burst out of the door to the basement and ran down the hall.

“Okay, we’re on camera again. Worst-case-scenario, we have six minutes. Tunnel access is probably…” Aaron had started opening doors. “Here, yeah.”

It was a maintenance room, concrete walls and storage. There was a large grate in the floor with a padlock on it.

“It’s going to take me a minute to get this open. I need you to stand watch.” Marta made a frightened noise. “You don’t have to fight; if you see anyone, just duck in here, quick as you can, and come get me. Can you do that?”

She nodded, then walked back to the door. She stood in the doorway, most of her body still in the room and her head peeking out, looking both ways down the hall.

Now that she had a minute to think, Marta was surprised to realize that they were in her part of the facility. Actually, the lab she had been working in that morning was only a few doors down.

It seemed impossible that only a few hours ago, her biggest concern had been clinical trials of one of her viruses. Now she was on the run from the U.S. government with Outcome-5, like she had accidently fallen into someone else’s life. She thought of her virus, her baby. Marta had always felt oddly attached to the viruses she engineered, and without her it was likely that the entire project would languish, at least for a little while.

Suddenly, she thought about her situation and the virus at the same time, and something clicked in her brain that hadn’t even occurred to her before. She stood up a little straighter. And at that moment, Aaron called to her.

“Time to go!”

She turned to him.

“Do we have time for me to grab something? It will only take a minute.”

“Marta—“

She put her hand on his arm to cut him off. “It’s important, Aaron.”

It only took him half a second to mull it over. “Okay, as long as it’s fast.”

She took off, yanking her I.D. badge from around her neck and swiping it. She went immediately to the freezer and pulled out one of her test tubes, then wrapped it in an ice pack and put them both in one of the plastic biohazard bags from a box by the testing station. On a whim, she grabbed a first aid kit too. Then she was running out the door.

~*~

The drop from the grate wasn’t too far, only about fifteen feet. Aaron laid on his stomach and held onto Marta’s wrists to lower her down, so she only ended up dropping about six of those feet anyway. He dropped down after her, looked both ways down the tunnel, and then gestured to the right.

“This way.”

Once they got about a quarter mile, the tunnel intersected with another one, this one with a steady stream of water flowing through it.

“Perfect,” said Aaron under his breath, then to Marta’s surprise, he sat down.

“What are you doing?”

He pulled out a hunting knife he’d hidden on his person, and then unbuttoned his pants.

“Um… Aaron?”

“There’s a GPS tracker implanted in my hip.”

He brought the tip of the knife down, and Marta shouted, “Wait!”

He waited. She was already on her knees, pulling open the first aid kit. “There should be a scalpel in here,” she said, hunting through it. “We had an accident once where someone got his hand caught in the pneumatic stapler we use for packaging culture shipments.” She pulled out the scalpel. “We’ve kept one around ever since. Would you let me?”

His expression was unreadable, but he nodded. He took her left hand in his and pulled it down to the flesh next to his hip. “Right here,” he said softly. She slid her fingers gently over the skin, feeling a tiny lump beneath it. Then, keeping her eyes on the spot, she pulled on a pair of rubber gloves from the kit.

“Ready?” she asked, bringing the scalpel up and trying not to think about the fact that he hadn’t had any kind of anesthetic, not even alcohol.

“Do it.”

She made the cut as quickly as possible, then glanced up to see how he was doing. He hadn’t made a sound, or jerked, or even gasped. He was just staring at her face intently. She pushed down on either side of the incision and used a finger to fish out the small plastic pellet. He held out his hand for it, and she gave it to him, then grabbed a package of gauze and ripped it open.

“Wait, hand me that, would you?” he said, indicating the wrapper. She gave it to him, and he put the tracker in it and crumpled it up while she tried to staunch his bleeding as much as possible. Then he tossed the ball he’d made overhand into the water and watched it float downstream.

“Let me guess,” she said as she grabbed more gauze and tape to bandage his wound. “We’re headed upstream?”

“Point to the Doctor,” he replied with a smile. She pressed down on the edges of the tape and sat back on her heels. He leaned forward, and this time, he started to take off his shoes. “We’re going to have to wade through it,” he said, indicating the water. This took her by surprise. There was a perfectly usable walkway on the side of the tunnel.

“Why?”

“Dogs,” was his reply, a grunt as he stood up. “They’ll have dogs out looking for us. The water will wash away the smell. Even more important, since I’m bleeding.”

She nodded; that made sense. As she took her own shoes off and put them into the makeshift sack with the med kit, ammo, and the package she stole from the lab, Aaron turned around, put his hands on the edge, and lowered himself tentatively into the water. It wasn’t as deep as it looked, only about thigh deep on him, which was waist deep on her. He held his hands up to beckon her down, then held her around the waist as he lowered her into the water.

It was surprisingly warm, like bath water, and as far as she could tell, clean.

“What is this?” she asked as he took her hand and set off upstream, almost pulling her along against the current.

“Coolant, I think. Like for a power plant?”

She nodded. Again, made sense. “Okay, next question. Are we headed somewhere in particular?”

“Yep.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A long talk about all the things our protagonists really need to talk about, and a little bit of romance to round it all out, hey!

_“Now hang on, Byer, this is not my fault.”_

_“No? You want to tell me how an Outcome operative AND the lead researcher on your chromosomal enhancement team both decided to go rogue and flee the country together with absolutely no provocation? What aren’t you telling me?”_

_“…There’s been a problem with Outcome.”_

_“What?”_

_“We’ve been dealing with it internally. It seems that Outcome agents are prone to… emotional instability. We’ve handled the anger management problems fairly well, through suppressants, but we’ve also had instances of romantic attachment that happened too quickly and intensely for us to head off the way we normally would. Outcome-3 fell in love with a man in Dubai while he was on assignment. We had to send him to Alaska to prevent the mission from being compromised.”_

_“So Aaron Cross and this doctor—they’re in love? Running away together? Star-crossed lovers setting out with the world against them?”_

_“Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll commit suicide.”_

_“Shut up, Ingram.”_

_“No, videos of their interactions show that Marta Shearing has never shown any sign of attachment to or interest in Five.”_

_“Then what? How did he convince her to run away with him? Is he threatening her?”_

_“What were they even doing in the same room in the first place?”_

_“We were testing a method of emotional manipulation. We thought that possibly, given the instability of his emotional state, close-quarters interaction with the object of his affections, specifically intercourse, might be the thing that flipped the switch back. We thought that if we gave him what he wanted, he would get over her.”_

_“Let me get this straight. You have had issues in the past with operatives feeling things more intensely than normal. You saw that an operative had developed romantic feelings for a woman. And you thought that the appropriate response… was to toss them both in a cell and expect them to have sex? Tell me, Lieutenant Colonel Banks: are you an idiot?”_

_“Aaron Cross is our most valuable operative; can you understand my reluctance to ship him off to the middle of nowhere? Byer, I don’t think—”_

_“Okay, you know what, shut up. Get him out of my sight. You, get me all archival footage of Outcome-5’s interactions with Dr. Shearing. I have to see what’s going on here for myself.”_

~*~

“Okay, this is it.” Aaron pulled up outside.

After a couple of hours in the tunnels, he had brought her to a long-term parking garage, god only knew where. In it was a car, presumably Aaron’s because it was full of things a spy-type person might need while on the run. He drove while she looked through it all: food and water, a full medical kit, extra clothes, a laptop, and a lot more besides.

“Outcome doesn’t know about this?” she had asked.

“No one knows about this car, or the other four I have stashed around the country. I was trained for covert ops by a clandestine government organization, Doc. What kind of spy would I be if I trusted the people who trained me?”

“A dead one, probably.”

Now they were in front of a run-down motel in Anacostia. Aaron turned around and started digging through the back seat.

“I’ll go in and get us a room,” he said. “Stay in the car, and I’ll try to get you inside as quickly as possible. Here, put this on.” He handed her a worn hoodie.

“Why? There aren’t any cameras.” Despite her protests, she pulled it over her head.

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Marta, you stick out like a sore thumb. Soaking wet, wearing a ten dollar sweatshirt, and you’re still the classiest woman for miles. You’re going to get noticed.”

She ducked her head and blushed a little. “Okay, point taken.”

Ten minutes later he was ushering her into a room with two twin beds.

“We can stay here for one night,” he said. “We need to leave in the morning.” There was a pause as he put two bags down on the bed and started pulling guns out of one of them, stashing them around the room. “And, incidentally, if you were going to have an emotional breakdown, now would be the time.”

Marta looked at him, expecting there to be mocking or distain on his face, but he seemed sincere, and maybe even a little concerned. She examined her own emotional state, and found herself surprisingly calm.

“I shot a man,” she said quietly, staring at her hands.

“Yes, you did. He was going to kill you.”

She nodded. “I’m not as upset about it as I would have imagined.”

“Well, maybe you got all the panic out of your system when it happened.” There was the jingle of metal, and she turned to watch him tip two pills out of their container into his hand, and then toss them into his mouth. That suddenly reminded her of the virus she’d tucked away in their canvas sack. She hopped off the bed and rushed over to it, digging out the bag and then quickly sticking it into the mini-refrigerator in the corner of the room.

She turned around to find Aaron looking at her with one eyebrow quirked.

“You know,” he said, “I think I’ve been pretty patient thus far by not asking exactly what biohazards you took the time to smuggle out of Sterisyn Morlanta while we’re on the run.”

It wasn’t exactly a question, but it was pretty pointed nonetheless.

“It’s not a biohazard,” she said. “Well, not really. It’s for you. We’ve developed a virus designed to take the changes brought about by your medication,” she gestured at the pill box on the table, “and make them… well, permanent. At least theoretically.”

“What?” he sputtered, “Wait, what? You’ve waited until just now to tell me this? Doc, that is amazing news, why are you just bringing it up _now_?”

He was already on his feet, moving toward her excitedly, his attention fixed on the refrigerator.

“Because!” she said, raising her voice to get his attention and holding up her hands, stopping him from trying to get around her. “Because we need to have a conversation about it first. It’s not that simple. Will you please sit down and let me explain?”

He looked at her, still seeming a little jittery with excitement, but he nodded. They both walked over and sat down at the small table by the window.

“Okay, so this virus, it’s cleared clinical trials and we were just about to start administering it to operatives when… all this happened. It _should_ work, but you need to know that there’s a risk. It might have no effect, it might cancel out the effects of the pills, it might even kill you. That’s assuming that the virus has even survived the last few hours outside a storage container.”

Aaron nodded eagerly. Clearly the prospect of being free from the medication was too exciting to be dampened by her warnings.

“The next problem is that I can’t give it to you now. It’s going to make you sick. Really sick. I’m not sure for how long, but a couple of days at least. It’ll be changing the genetic code in every single cell in your body; that doesn’t come easily no matter how healthy you are.”

Now he seemed to have sobered just a bit. “Okay, that is a bit of a problem, but I’ll figure it out. Tomorrow we’ll find somewhere remote, there’s a national forest about three hours southwest of here, we’ll make sure we’re safe, and then you can give it to me.”

“The third problem… is that it’s only going to make the physical changes permanent.”

At this news, Aaron deflated.

“What?”

“We focused on developing a virus based on your phys meds with plans to try the cognitive later if we were successful.”

He remained silent, his brow furrowed.

“How many more blue pills do you have?” Marta asked softly.

His fingers ran over the edges of his chem kit, but it seemed to be a nervous fidget more than anything else, because he didn’t even look at it before replying, “I’ve got enough for two more days. I suppose I could take half-doses, try to ration it—“

“No,” Marta interrupted, shaking her head. “That’s a very specific dosage of medication. Taking any less would be the same as not taking anything.”

Aaron sat and thought a little while longer.

“Do you know where I could get more?”

“I don’t. And wherever they keep them, don’t you think they’ll be expecting you to turn up there? Aaron, I know you might not want to hear this, but you may have to go without. It won’t hurt you, not permanently…”

“Won’t hurt me?” He sounded angry.

“No, I mean, there’ll be some headaches, you know that, but it won’t do any damage.”

“It’s not the headaches I’m worried about. I’ll regress. Right? I’ll go back to the way I was before.”

“Would that really be so bad?”

He let out a humorless laugh. “Doc, before the program, I was dumb as a brick. Maybe even dumber. My recruiter fudged my paperwork; he added twelve points to my IQ just to get me to the minimum.”

Marta looked at him, a little surprised. She had trouble picturing him as anything but the shrewd, capable man who’d saved her life. “Well, I mean, that’s not good news, but still, is it worth the risk? We could manage.”

“No, see, you don’t understand. You’re brilliant. Maybe the smartest person I’ve ever met; you’ve got _no clue_.”

“I haven’t—“

“Where’d you go to college?”

“Yale.”

“Yeah, and you were in gifted programs before that, right, in high school? Middle school, even? All your friends, all your co-workers, everyone you talk to is smart. I mean, maybe you’ve got some family members or neighbors that aren’t geniuses, but they’re at least average, aren’t they? You have never known a truly stupid person. I would be _less_ than no help to you, Marta. I would be a liability. No reasoning skills, no sense of consequences, no impulse control. When I was sixteen I stole an armored car, just because the keys were in the ignition. Drove it into a quarry.”

She couldn’t help a small snort. He responded with a chuckle. “Yeah, it’s kind of funny now, but that’s not really the point. If I regress, we die. It’s as simple as that.”

Suddenly there was a knock at the door. Marta jumped and groped for a gun on the table, while Aaron stood up and approached the door, another gun in his hand. He looked through the peephole, then said, “Ah!” sounding distinctly pleased.

He tucked the gun into his waistband and opened the door. Marta couldn’t see what was happening from where she was sitting, but she heard a man say, “From the diner next door.”

Aaron thanked him, there was an exchange of what Marta could only assume was cash, and then Aaron shut the door again, this time carrying two take-out bags.

“It was the man from the front desk,” he said. “Sorry, should have told you I was expecting him. But that was a good reflex.” He nodded to the gun she had gripped in her fist. “You keep that up, you might just live through this.”

“He brought us food?”

“Thought you might like a hot meal,” Aaron said softly, sitting down beside her. “They might be pretty rare for a while.”

Something in Marta’s chest clenched a little at the gesture. “Thank you.”

The food was delicious; it had been such a long time since she’d enjoyed a good burger. Veggie burgers just weren’t the same, not matter how much Peter insisted… suddenly Marta let out a tiny snort of laughter.

“What?” Aaron asked.

“Nothing. I just realized that, with all this happening, you’d think I’d be worried about my boyfriend. But I hadn’t even given him a thought until just now.”

Something strange passed over Aaron’s face. “You have a boyfriend?”

“Yes. Well, not… maybe? No? It’s complicated.”

Aaron just looked at her with an eyebrow raised. Marta sighed. “It hasn’t been good between us, the last few months. He’s been threatening to move out, and then yesterday…” God, had it really been that recently? “Yesterday we had a big fight and he told me he’d be gone when I got home from work today. I guess I’ll never know if he was serious.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “I’m kind of relieved, honestly. Like I said, it hasn’t been good between us. And I guess it doesn’t matter now.”

“If it matters to you, then it matters,” said Aaron, and something about that sentence made Marta want to laugh and cry all at once, because that right there, that affirmation, that was exactly what she could never get from Peter, and here was a man she’d barely even known eight hours ago, offering it to her like it was obvious.

Before she could stop herself, she really was crying. Not hysterically, but tears were slipping down her face and splashing onto her hands. Through her lashes she watched Aaron struggle with whether or not to touch her. Finally he settled with putting a hand on her forearm, which she covered with her other hand to show him he was welcome.

“What will they tell him?” she asked. “And my sister, my friends… what will they tell them?”

There was a pause. “Do you want the truth? Or a comforting lie?”

“I’m not sure exactly what you could say that would be comforting. Even telling them the truth would be awful.”

“The comforting lie would be that they would say you were dead.” Marta let out a soft sob, but she wasn’t thinking about Peter anymore. She was thinking about Lisa, her sister, and her nieces, and how they would cope with the news of her death.

“What’s the truth?”

“They’ll say you were a terrorist. That you stole samples, tried to sell them, or create bioweapons with them, or whatever. They’re in the process right now of planting evidence: fake psych evals, forged cell phone records, they don’t even have to lie about the stolen virus.”

“ _Why?_ ” What he was telling her, it seemed too cruel for words, and Marta couldn’t even see the point.

“To discredit you, in case you try to go public. If they announced your death, that would be easy to disprove. You could expose them for the liars they are. This way… you have no choice but to stay in hiding.”

Marta really broke down and sobbed at this, leaning forward to lay her cheek against the table, next to her hand holding Aaron’s. His other hand pushed her hair out of her face and tucked it behind her ear as she continued to cry.

Eventually her sobs quieted, and she raised her head to look at him.

“Why me? I mean, I know it’s a cliché, but I have to ask. This happened because you have… whatever it is you have for me. Why? Was I just the only woman you ever saw?”

“The only…” he looked surprised. “No. No, I’ve known lots of women: contacts, undercover work, other doctors. It wasn’t just convenience, you’re… you’re special.”

She looked at him with expectation in her eyes, and he sighed, looking down at their still-clasped hands. “Remember that exam I had, about a year ago, when you realized they were using me to test that adrenal enhancer that hadn’t cleared your lab yet?” She did remember. She had put a stethoscope to his chest and realized that if it weren’t for his physical enhancements, he’d be going into cardiac arrest right there on her examination table. The thought still made her angry, but Aaron had a smile playing around the corners of his eyes as he stared down.

“You called up Kevin Banks himself and chastised him, right in front of me. And I just felt… I don’t know. Endeared. I thought it was sweet.”

Aaron sighed, and continued to stare at his hands.

“You don’t…” Marta began, then stopped. “This isn’t a fixation at all, is it? That’s just one more thing they said to screw with us.”

“Yeah. I mean, don’t get me wrong,” he looked up and met her eyes for a second, then quickly looked away, blushing. “You’re very beautiful. And I’m certainly not _dis_ interested. But the times I didn’t turn my blood work in, I just… I wanted to see you. It wasn’t about sex.”

Marta gave him a smile that was just tinged with pity. “You had a crush. It’s _normal_. It happens to normal people all the time. And the fact that they thought you needed to be fixed… It’s like they didn’t want you to be human.”

“They didn’t. They wanted us to be weapons. Tools.”

“Aaron, whatever else happens, whatever happened to get us here—I’m glad we aren’t a part of that anymore.”

“Me too.” They shared a smile. Then he took a deep breath. “Okay, I’m going to lay everything on the table here, because if you’re going to stick with me you deserve to know where I stand.

“You asked me, at the beginning of all this… if I’d be gentle. You told me not to hold you to anything. Well, I don’t. I don’t expect anything from you, especially given how this got started, and if you only want to stick with me because your chances of survival are better, that’s _okay_. My help, my protection is in no way conditional on you returning my feelings.” He was quiet a moment, then, tentatively, like he expected her to pull away any minute, he turned her hand over and traced his thumbs over the lines in her palm.

“But I also can’t leave that question… Yes, I would be gentle. God, Marta, I would be anything you wanted me to be, for the chance to… to show you how I feel. However you’ll let me.”

A tiny shiver ran through Marta, and she was surprised to realize that it was arousal. How could she still be feeling aroused after all this?

“I… I don’t really know what to say to that.”

“You can just say, ‘No,’” he replied. “That’s enough.” He drew his hands away from hers, but she caught one again.

“No,” she said quickly. “I mean, no, I don’t want to say no. But I’m not sure I’m ready to say yes, either. It’s a… a strange situation. Eight hours ago, I didn’t even know your name. But so much has happened since then, and so much has changed, and you’ve gone a hell of a long way toward endearing yourself to me… It’s hard for me to know if what I’m feeling is just adrenaline and, and relief that I’m alive, and that you’re the one who saved me. And hearing what you just said to me, that’s a bit intoxicating too.” Aaron’s hand tightened almost unnoticeably in her grip. “I just… I need to think about it. But I’m not saying no.”

She finally met his eyes again, and he had a look on his face like he was trying hard not to grin. “That’s way better news than I was expecting to hear. And I understand, of course. Just… just tell me when you decide something. It would be nice not to have my hopes up too high.” He stood up, and offered her a hand.

“Now,” he said, all business again, “you can take a shower if you’d like, and I have some sweatpants and a t-shirt that should fit you okay. If all goes according to plan, we can pick up some more clothes for you tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” she said, and started to walk toward the bathroom.

“And for the record,” he said, throwing it out there deceptively casually, “if you didn’t want me to be gentle,” she turned and met Aaron’s gaze, which was positively smoldering, “I could do that, too.”

Marta felt herself go a little weak at the knees, and fled to the bathroom before she could make a fool out of herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops, my inner Jeremy Renner fanwoman escaped for that last bit, sorry.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our protagonists do some strategic misdirection.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this update took so long! I had to basically start over when I realized that what I had them doing made NO sense. And to be fair, there was a lot of research involved in this chapter. I now know way more about Hagerstown, Maryland than I'd ever planned to. The next update shouldn't take nearly as long, I already have part of it written.

_“Okay, turn it off. I’ve seen enough.”_

_“He told her she’d be_ compensated for her rape _.”_

_“…”_

_“Byer… you realize Banks is a nutcase, right?”_

_“He has sociopathic tendencies, which we knew when we gave him the position. He’s a highly effective administrator, and the lack of empathy was seen as an advantage. We never thought he’d have to deal with this sort of problem, or even worse, that he would keep it a secret from us.”_

_“If a single word of this gets out…”_

_“It won’t. We’ve neutralized all staff aware of their meeting, the ones Cross didn’t take care of for us, anyway, and—“_

_“Cross and Shearing are both still at large!”_

_“We have a whole team looking for them, it won’t be long. It’s the medication; he can’t elude us without it, and he’s only got four days left max. We’ve tightened our security on every med storage we’ve got. They’re running out of options.”_

~*~

Aaron woke Marta at the crack of dawn, shaking her awake with gentle hands. When she was aware enough to take in her surroundings, she realized that he must have been awake for a while before her, since everything was packed and ready to go. Actually, when she thought about it, he had been awake when she got into bed too, hunched over some wiring and a passport on the table.

Then she realized that his bed was perfectly neat.

“Did you sleep at all?”

He shook his head.

“Don’t need it. I only sleep about six out of every 48 hours, and I can function on even less than that. I’ll sleep tonight, if all goes according to plan.”

Marta stood and stretched, and pretended not to notice Aaron watching her askance, then picked up her clothes that had been draped over the back of a chair. Her jeans were stiff from air-drying, and all her clothes were a bit sweaty, but they were better than the huge t-shirt and sweatpants she’d slept in. Plus, when she stopped to think about it, they were the only things left in the world that she still owned. She hadn’t exactly been prepared to run for it when she attended a casual meeting with her head of department the day before. Now she was left with nothing but the clothes on her back and her Sterisyn Morlanta ID badge.

“We’re going shopping soon,” he said, seeming to sense her thoughts. “We can talk about the plan while we drive. Go on, get dressed, we need to leave soon.”

She nodded and turned to the bathroom, hearing the jingle of Aaron’s med kit, when a thought struck her like a bolt of lightning.

“Wait!” she said, turning back to him. He froze, a cupped hand halfway to his mouth, one eyebrow raised.

“Don’t take that right now.”

Later, Marta would realize it was a sign of immense trust that he actually lowered his hand and listened. “You said you have enough of your cognitives for two more days?” He nodded, a tad warily. “If you didn’t take one today, how long would it be before you felt effects?”

“About eighteen hours. You ought to know that.”

She nodded quickly. “I knew that was what the tests showed, but I thought I’d check. So if you didn’t take one today, it shouldn’t be a problem until after we’re settled wherever I’m going to give you the injection.”

“And that way, I wouldn’t be wasting a pill while I’m incapacitated from the virus,” he said, sounding thoughtful. Then he smiled at her, a bit surprised. “It never would have even occurred to me not to take one.”

“So it’ll work?”

He was quiet a moment as he mulled it over. “If I take a blue the minute I’ve recovered physically, I’m still going to be useless to you mentally for another twelve hours, give or take. And we’ll have to be moving as soon as possible, which means you’re going to have to drag me around by the hair for a while. And we’ll need to be careful to plan for every possible scenario, since I won’t be able to think on my feet and you aren’t used to strategizing like this.” He paused, staring at nothing, deep in thought. Then he waved a hand at her distractedly. “Go get changed; we’ll talk about it in the car.”

 ~*~

“Hey, Aaron?”

“Hmm?”

“Didn’t you say we were going to the Smoky Mountains?”

“Yep.”

“Why are we on 270?”

He shot her an approving glance.

“Here’s the thing: getting away from the people hunting us down isn’t just a matter of moving quickly and keeping our heads down. We’ve also got to send them in the wrong direction. They’re much more likely to catch us if they have no idea where we are.”

He paused to let her process this. “Because… because if they don’t know where we are, they’ll be looking everywhere. We need them to look the wrong way.”

“Exactly. So, the trickiest thing about this is slipping up in a way that we’ll be sure they’ll see, while still making it look like an accident and not an obvious misdirect. In order to do that, I’ve got to come up with _two_ plausible plans of escape: one we’re actually going to use, and one we’re going to make them think we’re going to use.”

“Okay, so the real plan is to… you know, you never actually told me what we’re going to do after I viral you off your phys meds.”

“That’s secondary, Doc. We’ll worry about that on the eight hour drive south. Right now, we’re going to Hagerstown.”

“Hagerstown? Why?”

“It’s our bluff. We’re going to pop our heads up in Hagerstown, then make a break for the mountains.”

“You want them to think we’re going north.”

“Not just north. It’s plausible escape number two: Canada. Our faces are currently on the US terrorist threat list, you can bet they’ve made sure of that, so if we wanted to get on a plane our only choice would be to get out of the States first. If we moved fast enough, had our paperwork in order, and didn’t let them know we were coming, we’d have a pretty good chance of getting through security in Toronto.”

“Okay, so we trick them into them into thinking we’re headed to Canada, how? We’ll have to show our faces somewhere that we could plausibly think they won’t be looking. But that we actually know they are looking. Like… security cameras? For private properties, would they be looking there?”

“Not if they didn’t have a reason to; it would be impossible for them to go through all the security camera footage of every business in every city we could plausibly be in right now. But you’re on the right track.”

“Oh, are they running our faces on the news? It wouldn’t be too hard to get recognized.”

“That’s definitely a possibility. I actually don’t know how much they’re publicizing the event: there are certain people whose job it is to make sure that this stays buried as deeply as possible, to protect the CIA and the DOD, and to keep outsiders from looking into the matter, but there are other powerful people who have been told we’re a threat to national security and they’re going to want to make that information public to protect people. If I had to guess who was going to win that battle, though, I’d bet on the former. The official story is that we’re terrorists, but my guess is that that information will stay need-to-know, unless someone leaks it. Any other ideas?”

At that, Marta suddenly looked over at Aaron. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

“What?”

“I trust you. If you’ve got a plan, you can just tell me, and I’ll do whatever you think we need to do. You don’t have to take time to coax me into working it out myself.”

He shot her a little smile. “That’s not it at all. You’re a lot smarter than me, Marta, even with my enhancements. Even though you don’t know how this world works, there’s still a good chance you’ll think of something I didn’t. Like not taking my blues this morning; I would never have even considered that. Taking my chems has been drilled into me since day one of Outcome, and I might have wasted valuable cognitive medication if not for you.

“Besides, it’s another hour to Hagerstown, what else are we going to do?” The smile he gave her this time was a bit more mischievous. She bit her lip and looked down.

“Okay, so, how do we let them know where we are and still make it look like an accident? I’m out of ideas.”

“That’s fine, I probably couldn’t have expected you to come up with this anyway, it’s kind of personal. We’re going to the DMV.”

“The… what?”

“I'm going to get a driver’s license under a fake name. It’s killing two birds with one stone: I need a photo ID, a recent one, and it’s someplace they’ll be looking, but I could plausibly not realize that.”

Marta blinked a couple of times, trying to wrap her head around that, and then said, “Nope, I’m going to need a better explanation than that. What do you mean, it’s personal?”

“What happened to trusting me and doing what I say?” he asked, but he sounded amused rather than irritated.

“I meant that. But like you said, we’ve got all this time, and I’d certainly prefer to understand if you don’t mind explaining.”

“I don’t. Open the glove compartment.” She did, and inside were a stack of half a dozen different passports. She pulled them all out and began looking through them.

“The top one is yours,” he said. “When I get access to a scanner and a printer tonight, I’m going to use your Sterisyn ID to replace the photo.” She opened the top passport, and looking back at her was a photo of a pretty brunette woman. June Monroe. Marta wondered where she was now.

“Look at the next one,” said Aaron, interrupting her thoughts. She did what he said, opening it up and reading the fake name – Karl Brundage.

“Oh. That’s… you?” She thought it was, but the photo had to be ten or fifteen years old, or possibly a younger brother. He chuckled.

“Yep, that’s me. That’s from when I started Outcome.”

“Started… but that was only five years ago!”

“Yeah?”

“You look…” she stopped and did a few calculations in her head. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-four,” he replied, like he wasn’t sure where this was headed. Marta was floored. She had pegged him for forty at least. It hit her like a slap in the face, how rough the program had to have been to have aged Aaron so much.

He interrupted her thoughts. “Yeah, so, you can see I need a new photo. Now, I could find a camera, and the right background and do it myself. Or I could let the good state of Maryland provide one for me, along with a valid photo ID.”

“Okay, I can see the logic in that. And the CIA will be searching the photo banks?”

“Well, not normally. That’s what I meant when I said it’s personal. This wouldn’t work if the person who’s looking for us right now weren’t the same guy I learned this trick from to begin with.”

“Who, Banks?”

“No, Banks isn’t in charge of the search for us. You can bet he’s been summarily relieved of all his duties; this is all his fault after all. No, the man running things is named Eric Byer. He’s Banks’ boss; he supervises all the beta-stem operations, not just Outcome. And he used to be my CO.”

“Okay, that makes sense,” she said, noting some tension in Aaron’s voice she knew better than to ask about. “And he knows you’ll be going to the DMV?”

“It’s something Byer taught me a long time ago. It takes almost nothing to get a driver’s license in most states, just a social security number and the matching name. If you need to forge a passport but you don’t have a photo, you get a license and then use that photo. Byer didn’t know I had this car stashed, which means he knows I need to get my hands on some papers. That means he’ll have them running facial recognition software through all the DMV records.”

“Okay, if you think that’ll work, I believe you. So after that happens they’ll know what fake name you’re using. So what if I called the Toronto airport and reserved two tickets to somewhere under that name?”

Aaron actually turned his head and took his eyes off the road to grin at her. “See, that’s exactly what I was talking about; good thinking.” Marta thought it was pretty likely he’d already thought of that and was just boosting her confidence, but somehow that made her appreciate the praise even more.

“And what am I going to do while you’re at the DMV?”

“Why, every woman’s favorite activity: you’re going shopping.”

~*~

Shopping had taken a lot longer than Marta had anticipated. Particularly because Aaron had very specific instructions about what she needed, and it was a lot.

“Get some normal clothes: at least one more pair of jeans and some shirts. Buy a pair of good running shoes, and socks and underwear. Think like you’re packing for a vacation that might involve a lot of activity. We may end up camping for a while, depending on how things go, so get some hiking clothes. Oh, and buy a coat. A good one, like for skiing, that has a detachable liner. Don’t worry about cost, we’re tossing that credit card today, feel free to max it out. And then go to the drugstore and stock up on whatever toiletries you need. Try to think of everything; we could go shopping later if we needed something, but this is the last time we’re allowed to not be careful.”

There was, conveniently, an outlet mall right across the interstate from the Hagerstown Motor Vehicle Administration building, and Marta had spent more money in the last two hours than she’d spent in the last two weeks before this. Most of it was spent at Columbia, but she also took a run through a Gap and then drove a ways until she found a CVS. By the end of it, she had loaded the car up with shopping bags and driven back to their prearranged meeting place.

With a bit of extra cash, Marta went inside the Waffle House next to the DMV and ordered a coffee, then settled in to wait for Aaron. Just when the fear that something terrible had happened was beginning to overwhelm her, the bell on the door tinkled, and she breathed easily for the first time in two hours.

The moment they made eye contact, he raised his eyebrows at her in question. She nodded, in response, and then stood up to greet him.

“How are you, June?” he asked.

“Fine, thanks,” she replied. “Are we leaving right away?”

“Yeah, we need to hurry if we’re going to make it to the airport in time.” She nodded, and grabbed her ticket to pay for her coffee.

“Any problems?” he asked as he ushered her back to the car.

“No. You?”

“Nope. If everything works correctly, they’re on their way up here right now.”

“So we should leave now.”

“One more thing.”

~*~

They drove over to a truck stop that had a payphone that took credit cards. Marta handed over the card she’d been using all day, and Aaron used it to dial the Toronto Pearson International Airport.

“Yes, I’d like to purchase two tickets to Switzerland… Today, anytime past 8PM… Yes, that will work… Karl Brundage… Coach is fine.” He then gave the telephone operator the information on the card. “Okay… Yes, I’ve got a pen ready,” he said, winking at Marta and drumming his empty hand on the wall. “Okay, yes. That sounds good. Thank you.” And he hung up.

“Okay, we’re going to leave the card right… there,” he said, dropping it on the ground behind the payphone. “If someone picks it up and tries to use it, all the better for us, one more lead they’ll have to track down.”

They got back in the car, and Marta finally had to ask, “Okay, now where are we going?”

He grinned at her, and with a drawl so bad it actually made her giggle, he said, “Tennessee, baby!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note about Aaron's age: in the movie, when Aaron shows Marta his "In Memoriam" webpage, it says he died in 2003 and was 26 at the time. Given that I've set this story eight months before the actual movie, that makes him 34.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this is taking so long! In my defense, I'm an engineering student, which means I'm already spending more time than I should writing this. Not to worry, though, because I have ideas. It just might take a while for me to get them down.

“Okay, I have to ask. What’s in Tennessee?” They had been driving for an hour or so with the radio filling in the silence.

“Um… Graceland? Dollywood? The Titans?”

“Smartass,” was Marta’s reply, but with good humor. “You know what I meant. Where are we going?”

“Well, in a general sense, we’re headed to the Tennessee Valley and the Smoky Mountains. More specifically, we’re going to a very affluent little town called Sevierville, about a half-hour east of Knoxville.”

“Isn’t that a bit… non-middle-of-nowhere for our purposes?”

“It’s not our final destination. The Great Smoky Mountain National Park is only about a half-hour south of there, and we’re going to be stopping somewhere in between the two. I researched the area last night, and I’ve picked out a few likely spots that we could stop based on what we’re looking for.”

“Which is?”

“We’re going to break into someone’s vacation home.”

“What? Why can’t we just rent a cabin? Isn’t that safer?”

Aaron shook his head. “Nope. Breaking in somewhere means no one will ever know we were there, except possibly the owners of the home, but that won’t be until weeks or months later.”

“Why couldn’t we break into a rental?”

“Owners pay pretty close attention: since their properties are so spread out they get squatters pretty frequently. So if they aren’t driving by to check their empty ones, they’ve got cameras or alarms that can’t be disengaged on site.”

“But what if the people who own the house we’re staying in come home?”

“We’ll plan for that, but it isn’t likely. Buck hunting season is over, and the skiing’s no good anymore, but it’s not summer yet, so no summer vacations. Plus, late March is a busy time for all those wealthy business-types, what with tax time coming up, and it’s the end of the fiscal year for a lot of companies.”

“I… if you say so…” she said, a bit thrown by just how much he seemed to have thought about this.

“I do. Trust me.”

“I do.”

~*~

The next six hours were spent in near-silence. Marta had bought a couple of books on her shopping spree, and she read while Aaron drove, occasionally flipping stations on the radio until he found something he liked. He sung along softly to a few country songs, and she was surprised to learn that he had a very pleasant singing voice.

A few hours later they stopped for lunch and gas in a little town called Buchanan, and as they sat across from each other in the diner the lack of conversation between them grew more and more pronounced. It seemed as though when they weren’t talking about their survival plans, there wasn’t much to say.

It came from not really knowing where they stood in relation to each other. On one hand, they’d really only known each other for a day. On the other hand, in that day, he’d seen her naked physically and emotionally, she’d begged him for sex, he’d treated her with kindness and respect in the face of enormous pressures, _and_ he’d saved her life. Their relationship hadn’t developed as much as it had exploded, its state evolving too quickly and violently to quantify. But that meant that now that it was over, they had no idea where they’d ended up. It was going to take time to figure it out.

“Oh, no, you don’t want to do that,” Aaron said under his breath, startling Marta out of her thoughtful daze. His attention was on the television mounted to the wall of the diner behind her head.

She turned to look, and was surprised to see that what had engrossed Aaron was a poker tournament.

“Do you play poker?” she asked, more as a casual question to start a conversation than anything else.

“Yeah, when I’ve got time. Which isn’t too much, you know.”

“They teach you that for a cover? Casino Royale?”

He grinned. “Did you just compare me to Bond? I’m flattered.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t,” she said, teasing, “for my sake. You know what happens to Bond girls.”

That got a laugh out of him. “Yeah, well, no need to worry, the poker thing has nothing to do with my job. I grew up in Reno; I was sneaking into casinos before I was old enough to drive, let alone gamble. I was pretty good, too.”

“Even before you were… enhanced?” she asked, before realizing that it sounded a bit offensive.

“Yeah, well, I was good at reading people’s faces. Calling bluffs, stuff like that. It’s not really related to intelligence. I mean, that’s not to say I’m not better at it than I used to be, but reading people has always been...”

And suddenly, it was like he was gone. He stared blankly at nothing for a moment, long enough that she interrupted with a concerned, “Aaron?”

He blinked, looked at her, and then shook his head violently. “Sorry,” he said. “Attention issues. One of the first withdrawal symptoms.”

“Hm,” she said, taking a thoughtful pause. Then, figuring it was as good a segue as any, she said, “Can we talk about that? The cognitive meds, I mean. You must have a plan for how—.” By this point, the check had come, and he shook his head abortively. A second later she saw the waitress walking over.

“So, this one time,” he said, a little loudly, a perfect impression of a stereotypical braggart male. “My buddies and I snuck into a joint and we ended up stuck out there, our ride bailed on us. And this place, they had these huge jackpots on some of their slot machines.” He was standing up and guiding her out the door as he talked. “And there was this motorcycle up on a podium that you could win. Well, we were delinquents, okay, we knew how to hotwire shit. Yeah, thanks, you too,” he said to the hostess who wished them a good day on their way out the door. “So two of us distracted the security guard while the third started the thing up, and he literally rode that bike right off the—“ right at that moment, they had reached the car, gotten in, and shut the door.

“Sorry,” he said, in a much less posturing tone as he started the car. “None of that is true, actually, I saw it on a sitcom once. But we really shouldn’t talk about Outcome where people can hear. Got to stay vigilant.”

“Okay,” she said. “But you are going to tell me what we’re going to do?”

“Of course. I thought about it, and I think Manila is the best option.” She had told him earlier in the drive about the lab in Manila, where the live virus was kept that would seed the adhesion of his enhancements. Of course, of all their options, it had the biggest potential benefit, which meant, naturally, that it was also the riskiest.

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” she muttered.

“Yeah, I know. But like I said before, we have to get out of the country if we want any hope of getting on a plane. Since Canada’s out, I think the best choice is going to Florida and hopping a ferry to Cuba.”

“Do they have those?”

“Well, not legally. But there are boats that travel back and forth from Miami to Havana with illegal aliens. Most are going the other direction, of course, but the boats have got to go both ways.”

“Right. So after you recover from the virus, I put you in a car and drive us to Miami?”

“Yeah. That’s about a fourteen hour drive, so you’re going to have to stop for the night. You best bet is to stop somewhere pretty sketchy that takes cash and makes a point of not remembering your face. In a town that’s not right on the interstate, if you can. That’s too obvious.”

“And during this trip, you’re going to be…” she trailed off.

“You can say ‘stupid.’ It’s not an unfair assessment.”

“Maybe not unfair, but it’s pretty unkind.”

He shrugged, shifting his hands on the steering wheel. “Yeah, well, you haven’t tried to talk to that version of me yet. Yes, if I take the medication as soon as I get better, I won’t be mentally competent until about twelve hours later, so more than likely, that night in the next hotel.”

“So you’ll be able to deal with the sketchy/illegal boat part.”

“If all goes according to plan, yes.”

“Okay, let’s talk about if it doesn’t.”

~*~

They spent hours discussing their plans. Everything that could go wrong, how Marta could do what needed to be done if Aaron was indisposed either mentally or physically. He encouraged her to come up with every possible scenario that could happen between that moment and the moment that he had recovered from a successfully administered cognitive viral in Manila.

There were a lot of possibilities.

And after she’d thought of everything, he thought of a few more things besides, things that made her realize she’d had no idea what worst-case scenario meant.

For example, she’d never considered the possibility that she might be caught and tortured for information on Aaron.

“Don’t try to resist,” he’d said. “You’re an incredibly strong woman, but you don’t have the training to resist physical or mental torture, and you’ve got no clue what they’re capable of. Trying to hold out on them is just going to mean that they hurt you more before they break you. I won’t tell you what I plan to do if you get captured, so you don’t have that information to give up. Everything else is inconsequential.”

She was silent. He glanced over at her, then reached over to take her hand.

“Don’t worry, Doc,” he said casually. “I’m not going to let that happen. I just need you to be prepared for every possibility.”

She laced their fingers together and didn’t say a word.

~*~

Their planning conversation lasted most of the next four hours, until they finally reached Sevierville. Aaron drove through the town and took an exit that said ‘Smoky Mountain National Park: 12 miles.” After a series of turn-offs leading to smaller and smaller roads, they came to a large cabin, which Aaron took one look at and quickly turned around, heading back the way they’d come.

“Didn’t like the looks of their security,” he said as an explanation. “We need someone with an older home and an unmonitored system.”

They drove by three more houses before finding one Aaron liked, and Marta was relieved to note that every one of them was empty.

When they did finally park in front of a very quaint log cabin, she waited in the car while he worked his spy magic and broke into the house.

Finally, he poked his head out the back door and waved at her to come inside.

“Grab a few bags while you’re at it,” he called.

Once they got all the luggage and merchandise from that day’s shopping inside, Aaron said, “Okay, first order of business: inventory. Let’s see what we have and what we need.”

He began unpacking with brutal efficiency and laying things out on the kitchen table. Marta felt very odd being in what was clearly someone’s home, even if it was their second home, but it didn’t seem to phase him at all.

After he had approved her purchases and catalogued them mentally, he started handing them to her to pack, muttering under his breath the whole time.

“Gloves, you need some gloves, I should have said—“

“They’re in that bag,” she said, indicating. “I figured, you know, when you said to get a coat. Plus, I sort of went wild at the sporting goods store.”

He grinned. “That’s fantastic. Okay, gloves, check, I’ve got a work pair and a pair for snow, there’s socks and…” And he trailed off, muttering all the while. She only caught the occasional phrase, some obvious, like, “…two pants, three shirts, that’s six outfits…” and some that didn’t make any sense at all, like, “…every cow in India…”

It wasn’t until he started going through the toiletries she’d bought that he said something that really caught her attention.

“…no tampons, or pads, too young to be menopausal, needs…”

Damn. She had hoped, being a man, that he wouldn’t notice.

“No,” she said, quietly, not quite loudly enough to break through his mutterings. “I had cancer.”

She could almost hear his train of thought come to a halt.

“What?”

Marta sighed, then turned to face him. “I don’t need feminine supplies.” She raised the hem of her shirt and showed him where, just above the waistband of her low-rise jeans, there was a horizontal pink slash that was several inches long. “I had a hysterectomy last year. Endometrial cancer. It was only stage one, and as far as they can tell, I’m fine now.” Aaron’s eyes were fixed on her stomach and he had look on his face that was just a tinge horrified.

She lowered her shirt. “Sorry, I know it’s ugly.” As she turned back to her bags, she thought she heard a quiet noise from him. They stood there in silence for a moment, before she spoke softly again.

“I was engaged at the time.” She didn’t know why she was telling him this; she never talked about her ex-fiancé. “And he left me. Told me he was sorry, but he couldn’t marry a woman who couldn’t give him children. He didn’t even wait to find out if I was going to survive, just packed up and left when I decided to have the procedure.” Marta didn’t cry. She’d done her crying for James and that was over. She had moved on, she had met Peter, that part of her life was behind her. But she did startle, just a bit, when she felt Aaron’s hand on her shoulder, turning her back to face him.

The intensity in his eyes nearly floored her. The hand on her shoulder moved to cup her cheek, and she was sure he was going to kiss her, and that she wasn’t going to stop him. But instead, he spoke.

“Stop me if I’m out of line, okay?”

And then smoothly, he dropped to his knees in front of her. Before she even had time to be surprised, he had his hands on her hips, and began moving them upward slowly, taking her shirt with them. When he had the hem of the garment up around her ribcage, he flicked his eyes up to meet hers once, then leaned forward and placed a gentle kiss on her scar.

Marta gasped. She couldn’t help it, the skin around the edges of the scar was sensitive, and Aaron’s lips were warm and just a little chapped and the combined feeling was electric. He pulled her toward him and pressed his cheek into her stomach, breathing her in, and she thought she could feel the pull of his smile. He laid a few more kisses along the incision, then pulled back to look her in the eye.

“This is _not_ ugly,” he said, his voice low but full of conviction. He punctuated the statement with another kiss. “It shows your strength. You’re a survivor. That’s beautiful.” Marta had heard that before, but she’d never believed it until now.

He began laying kisses all over the plane of her stomach, kisses full of intent. His hands moved around to her back, one fisting the shirt to hold it up, freeing the other to skim down the small of her back and her side. She began to lose herself in the sensations: his kisses, his callused fingertips stroking the soft skin of her waist, and the deep burn of arousal inside of her. She bit back another gasp when she felt his tongue dart out and swipe along her skin. And then his free hand was moving downward, skimming along the waistband of her jeans, coming to rest at the button. He pulled his head back and looked at her again.

“Can I?” is all he said.

Marta closed her eyes for a moment and covered his hand with hers. “Aaron…”

“Please? I want to taste you.” She shuddered a bit at the mental image of him pushing her down onto the couch and putting his head between her legs.

“I need to give you your inj—”

“I’m not asking for anything in return,” he interrupted, with just the barest hint of pleading in his voice. “I just want to make you feel good.” It was the tone of his voice that alerted her to what was happening. Something about their interaction had just changed. He sounded out of character, like a child. His kisses, which had been erotic, had changed into a desperate nuzzle against her stomach. Exactly like a child.

“Aaron,” she said gently, pulling his hand away from her jeans, “You promised not to pressure me, do you remember that?”

He looked up at her with a furrow in his brow that was part pout and part confusion. Jesus. A man as deadly as him had no business being that cute.

“I think your cognitive medication is wearing off,” she said softly. “Can you tell me what the square root of 144 is?”

He blinked a few times in confusion, then shook his head violently as though to clear it and moved away from her, standing up and stepping back all in one movement. When he spoke again, he sounded much more like his old self.

“God, Marta, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

His features were twisted with guilt. “No, it isn’t. I promised not to push you. I just, I was so close to you, my brain just… shut off. I couldn’t think of anything but how badly I wanted—“ He cut off abruptly, looking even more guilty.

“It’s okay. You gave me an out at the beginning. You stopped the minute I pulled back. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I just— it would be so easy for me to abuse the position that we’re in, even by accident. I never want you to feel like I’m—“

“Aaron,” she said softly, cutting him off. “It’s obvious to me that the thought of coercing me into having sex disgusts you.” Even now she could see it in the face he made at her words. “You need to know that if and when anything happens between us, it’s because I want it to happen, not because I feel afraid or obligated. I appreciate that you’re being careful, but you can’t feel guilty every time you give both of us something we want.”

“Both?” he asked, sounding surprised and hopeful. She smiled.

“I like how you touch me. I like knowing how much you want me. And more importantly, I love how respectful you are. But that doesn’t mean that now is the right time to…”

“Oh, no, of course not,” he said quickly, clearly trying to hide how eager he sounded. “And I really need to finish here and make your passport before you give me that shot. But, um,” he looked at his feet, blushing, “would you mind… a kiss? Call it an apology.” And god, one of her favorite things about him was how candid he was. No games, no dancing around the subject, just an honest assessment of his feelings and what he wanted. Marta had never experienced that kind of openness before.

“You don’t have anything to apologize for, but I’d like that.”

He smiled shyly and held open his arms, letting her make the choice to walk into them. She did, because she wanted to, and whatever else happened in the next few days, she wanted to have done at least this.

His embrace was warm and tight and ridiculously comforting, and then he was easing his mouth over hers and _damn_.

She wondered if ‘Seducing Women 101: the Kiss’ was a class they taught in spy academy, because it didn’t seem right that he could have come by this sort of talent naturally.

He was firm, and a little domineering, but she couldn’t say she didn’t like it. He was surrounding her, one arm around her waist and the other in her hair, and he licked across her lips in a way that was, if not forceful, then at least insistent. The arousal that had died off was back again, and when he pulled away, she couldn’t stop her arms from tightening around his neck in an effort to keep it from ending.

“Not the right time,” he said softly, echoing her words from earlier and lacing them through with a wicked promise. And then he pulled away from her and went back to what he’d been doing, leaving her to shake her head in an attempt to clear the fog.

~*~

It was pretty late that night when Aaron finally presented Marta with her brand new passport. Now, next to the name June Monroe, there was a photo of her, flipped and tinted so it wouldn’t be obvious that it was the same photo as her Sterisyn ID. She took it and put it next to the wallet full of fake cards under June’s name that Aaron had given her the night before.

Then she took a deep breath.

“Is it time?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

She fetched the virus from the refrigerator while Aaron opened the med kit and pulled out a needle. She filled the syringe deftly and then turned to him, sitting with one arm already extended.

“Marta,” he said, just as she was about to administer it. “Just so you know, I don’t regret anything.”

“Neither do I,” she replied. And as she gave him the shot all she could think was, _I hope that’s still the case in twenty-four hours_.

~*~

_Thirty-one hours later_

~*~

Finally, _finally_ , Aaron jerked awake. He looked around, wide-eyed, before spotting her.

“Marta!” He seemed very glad—and worryingly surprised—to see her.

“Aaron,” she said, moving over to check his temperature. He leaned into the hand she put on his head. “How do you feel?”

Oh, and that adorable little pout-frown was back, providing an unnecessary reminder that Aaron wasn’t in his right mind. “My head hurts.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “I told you that would happen when you went off your meds. Here.” She grabbed his med kit from the nightstand where it had been sitting and put it into his hand. Then she hurried back to the bags and began packing hastily. When she turned back, Aaron hadn’t moved, and was still staring at the metal box in his hand. Okay, apparently Marta was going to have to break things down more than she had thought. She moved back to him.

“Here,” she said, taking the kit back and opening it. “You don’t need to take your greens anymore, remember? Just your blues.” She used her nail to pry out one of the two blue pills left in the box and then held it out to him. “Take it.”

And of course, of all the parts of their plan to go wrong, it would be this one. Because at that moment, Aaron looked Marta in the eye with an expression that could put puppies across the globe to shame, and said the absolute last thing she needed to hear.

“I don’t want to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aha! Yes, things are about to take a turn for the very interesting.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we meet Aaron, as he was originally. Turns out, he was pretty adorable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a nice long one to make up for everyone being so patient. I think there's only going to be two or three more after this, we're definitely wrapping up.

“What?”

“I don’t want to take my medicine, Marta.” He sounded surprisingly firm.

“Aaron, do you understand what this is? This pill—“

“Is to make me smart,” he cut her off. “I know. I remember things.”

Normally, Marta would ask for his reasons, would be willing to have a discussion. But she still wasn’t sure how able to discuss this Aaron was going to be, and more importantly, they _really_ didn’t have time. So instead, she cut straight to the chase.

“Do you remember, in the hotel room in D.C., you told me that if you went off your meds, we would die?”

“Yeah, but it’s not true. I’ll do everything you say, I promise.”

“Aaron, I need you to be able to strategize.”

He shook his head insistently. “You don’t. You’re smarter than me, remember, I said? You’re smart enough to keep us safe.” His eyes shone with complete, utter, heart-wrenching faith in her.

Marta bit her lip, and did some calculations in her head. The drive south was supposed to take fourteen hours, plus eight hours in a hotel room. She had a bit less than ten hours leeway if she wanted him to be back to fully-enhanced by the time they got to Miami. Ten hours to convince Aaron to take his chems. She could do that. Probably.

“Okay, Aaron. You don’t have to take the pill, but we aren’t done talking about this.” She put the blue pill carefully back in its place, then, after a moment of internal debate, hung the chem kit around her own neck. “Right now, we need to make sure you’re physically healthy, and then get out of here. Wait here, I’ll be back with the med kit.”

He waited dutifully on the bed, while Marta fetched the bag and pulled out a stethoscope. She listened to his pulse and breathing, checked his blood pressure, and did a reflex test before determining that he was, by all accounts, healthy.

“Okay, I think you’re fine, as long as you feel okay. We should try to see if your enhancements stuck.”

“I feel great! What do you want me to do?” He sounded eager, and even… happy. “I could run up the mountain? Or climb a tree! Want to see me climb a tree?” And he was bouncing to his feet and out the door.

By the time Marta followed him outside, Aaron was already part of the way up a huge pine tree. Just as she looked up, he took a leap from one branch to another a truly terrifying distance away, and she shrieked just a little bit, instincts overriding the knowledge that he was stronger and more agile than nearly any human being in the world. He made it, catching the limb and hoisting himself up, then looking down at her.

“I’m fine!” he shouted with a grin.

“More than fine, I’d say!” she called back, and even though she was worried about the situation, Aaron’s good mood was infectious. “Now come down, please. We really need to leave.”

He swung down, landing in front of her with a thump.

“I’m still strong,” he said happily.

Marta sensed an opportunity. “Yes, isn’t it nice to be enhanced that way? Wouldn’t you like your mind to be as strong as your body?”

His good humor vanished immediately. “It’s not the same at all. You don’t understand. I remember being like that, and it’s not… it’s not nice. Not at all.”

She tried to keep the distress out of her expression.

“Okay. We’ll talk about it more later. Let’s go pack.”

 ~*~

They packed quickly, only slowed by the fact that Aaron refused to let Marta carry anything heavy. She checked the map one last time as he loaded up, and then they were off. Aaron was quiet now that he was in the car, and he had the air of someone waiting for the other shoe to drop. Minutes passed in silence.

She looked over at him as she merged onto the highway, and found him watching her.

“You’re worried,” he said quietly.

“Of course I’m worried,” she snapped, then regretted it immediately. “Sorry. I just… I wasn’t prepared for this. For you to be… this.”

“I’m sorry. I know it would be easier for you if I took my blues, but I just can’t.”

“Can you explain why?”

He sighed. “When I’m smart, I can think about lots of things at the same time, you know? It’s a really funny feeling, remembering that I did that but not being able to now.”

“Is that not a good thing? Being able to think about multiple things?”

“No, because… Because the things I thought about were usually… not nice things.”

“Like what?”

“Stuff I did, mostly. Bad stuff. People I hurt, or killed. No matter what I was doing, there was always part of my brain thinking about everything I’d done. I killed a mother, once. While her little babies were playing in the nursery.”

“Why?”

His brow furrowed. “I was in Syria… Something about… political alliances? I made it look like someone else did it, they explained everything to me… destabilizing… someone? I don’t really remember, see, that’s the thing. The way I am now, I don’t remember the details. And I don’t have to feel guilty all the time, ‘cause I can just think about something else. I could never do that before.”

Even out of her peripheral vision, Marta could see that Aaron was turning that puppy dog look on her again.

“You know, when you were enhanced, you definitely wanted to stay that way.”

“I know. When you’re smart, it seems like the most important thing in the world is being smart. But the way I am now… with you… I could be happy instead.”

“With me? What if I said that if you wouldn’t take your blues I’d be forced to leave?”

“What?” He suddenly sounded extremely distressed.

“Aaron, I care about you, but you told me before that you’d be a danger to me like this.” Actually, if she was honest with herself, she was never going to leave him. She was more trying to see if the threat would be enough to get him to take his medication.

“No! No, I’ll protect you! I’d die to protect you, Marta. Don’t you remember what I told you last night?”

Shit. She’d really hoped he’d forgotten, he’d been so out of it…

~*~

_“Please,” Aaron said, reaching out and groping for her hand. “Please don’t go.”_

_Marta moved to sit back down, but he tugged weakly at her arm, trying to pull her onto the bed. Finally she conceded and leaned back against the headboard. Aaron immediately wrapped an arm around her waist and burrowed his head into her shoulder like a child. She laid a palm against the feverish skin of his neck and held him as he shook and sweated and moaned softly._

_“I’m dying,” he choked out a little while later._

_“You’re not,” she said, trying to sound calm and reassuring even though she knew there was a very real chance that he_ was _dying. “I told you this would happen; you’re going to be fine.”_

_She felt him shake his head once. “I’m dying; I can tell.”_

_“Try to sleep.” She stroked his hairline gently._

_“Marta,” his voice was a little louder now, a little more distraught. “I love you.” Her hand stilled in surprise. “I’m in love with you. I d- don’t know when it happened, I know I barely know you but I can’t… I can’t help it.”_

_“Shh,” was all she said, was all there was to say. He fell into a fitful sleep almost immediately, leaving her to stew in even more fear than before._

~*~

“Of course I remember,” she said softly.

“Then how can you think I would hurt you?”

“I know you wouldn’t do it on purpose, Aaron, but that doesn’t mean you won’t make a mistake. Are you telling me that you wouldn’t take your medication to keep me from leaving?”

“Are you saying you would make me?” he replied, sounding so hurt and afraid that Marta regretted ever bringing it up.

“No,” she sighed. “After everything you’ve done for me, I’d pretty much be a monster if I forced your hand that way.”

“If it comes to that, we both know you could trick me into taking them.”

“But I won’t. Aaron, this all started because you refused to force me to do something, even though you knew that refusal was going to make your life harder. I’m going to return the favor now. I’m not going to stop trying to talk you into taking the blues, but I won’t force you to either. Or trick you, or threaten you, or anything. I promise.”

“Thank you.”

~*~

They drove for a long time in silence after that, Marta trying to think of her next tactic to convince Aaron to take his chems.

“Hey, so I have a question,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“I know you remember what it was like to be enhanced. But I’m wondering, do you feel like you’re the same person? Or does smart-Aaron feel like a separate person than the one you are now?”

He thought it over silently for a moment. “Separate, I think, mostly. I remember being that way, but everything’s so different. I feel totally different. I feel different about everything.” She felt him look her over. “Or, most things, anyway,” he amended.

“Okay, so, my problem here is that I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do, but I feel like I’m also defying that other you’s wishes. The smart you wants to stay smart. I feel like I’m letting an entire person die.”

“But it has to be one of us. You’re saying you’d rather me than him?”

 _Yes_. “No. I’m saying that I’d feel a lot better if I could talk to the smart version of you about this. Shouldn’t he get a say too?”

“If I let you give me the pills, there’s no way I’m ever going to stop taking them again.”

“No, see, that’s not true. You only have two pills left. Do you remember that we planned to go to Manila? We were going to try to viral you off your blues, the same as we did with the greens. But the thing is, there’s no way we can get there before you run out of pills again. I’m really just asking you to let me talk to the other you. Just for a little bit. If I can’t convince you to stay enhanced, maybe I can convince the smart version of you that it’s better not to be enhanced.”

“Why does it matter? If you aren’t going to force me to take them anyway…”

“It matters because I feel terrible about this. Can’t you see the position you’ve put me in, Aaron? You’re basically forcing me to choose between you and the man I’ve been getting to know for the past four days.”

He was silent for a little bit. Contemplating.

“You like me better when I’m smart,” he said softly. It wasn’t an accusation, just a statement.

“I don’t know you like this. If you _are_ basically two different people, then I met you three hours ago.”

“But you know that I love you.”

“Will that change if you’re enhanced?”

“No… But I might try to hide it. I did before.”

“That doesn’t really matter,” she said gently. “It’s something we’ll sort out later. Can we go back to the question at hand?”

He paused. “What’s that?”

“Whether you’ll agree to take your pill and be enhanced temporarily.”

“Oh. No, I don’t want to,” he pouted.

“I know you don’t. I’m asking you to anyway. Please?”

He quiet for a long time.

“You have to promise me something.”

“What?”

“Promise that once I’m enhanced, you won’t let me pull any tricks or sneaky stuff. I know that when I’m smart again I’m going to do everything I can to stay that way. Promise me that you won’t give me that blue shot thing unless _I_ say it’s okay, this version of me.”

“Okay. That’s fair. I promise that I will wait for you to come down from the cognitive enhancements before I make any immutable changes to your mind or body.”

“…What’s immutable mean?”

“Permanent. I won’t make any permanent changes, like giving you the shot, until your blues have worn off again.”

“Okay. Then I’ll take the medicine.”

She gave him her most grateful smile as she pulled the chem kit off and handed it to him. “Thank you. Do you want to stop for lunch?”

“Yes, I’m starving!”

~*~

After dinner (which was even more unbearably quiet than the first meal they’d shared days ago), Marta decided to approach the question that had been bothering her ever since Aaron had first refused his meds.

“Aaron… five years ago, when all this started… were you forced into Outcome?”

“No. I agreed to be in it.”

“Did you know what you were agreeing to?”

“Um…” He furrowed his brow trying to remember. “I knew it was a science-y thing. Like they said they were going to do experiments on me.”

“How did they pick you? What happened to lead up to you entering the program?”

“I was… I was hurt. There was a bomb, it blew up the humvee I was in, and Banks, he pulled me out of the hospital. I remember being hurt, and scared, and they were really nice to me. They gave me my own room. I’d never had my own room before, not in my whole life. And I was hurt so bad they were gonna discharge me if I didn’t enter the program, and I had nowhere to go. No home, nothing. I was too old for the boy’s home to take me back. Outcome… it seemed like a pretty good deal.”

They were quiet a moment. Then Aaron whispered, “Please don’t look so sad.”

“I always thought… I assumed that the Outcome participants were fully consenting.”

“I did say yes.”

“It’s not the same. And it doesn’t even matter, because I never asked.” Fury was bubbling up inside Marta, at herself and her employers. “I didn’t even think, I only cared about the science, and as long as no one was being strapped down and force-fed pills right in front of me, I didn’t give a damn about scientific ethics. You were hurt, and scared, and you have an IQ of 78 for god’s sake, that makes you legally disabled! Informed consent was never even a possibility. But even if it was, it’s the fact that I never even…” This was all pouring out of her mouth in a rush, without her thinking about what it sounded like. Until Aaron interrupted her.

“I’m not disabled.”

She closed her mouth with a snap. “…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that, I know you aren’t. I’m just… mad at myself. Sorry.”

“Don’t be mad at yourself. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

She laughed hollowly. “That’s just not true. I did a lot of things wrong. If everything about Outcome came to light, I’d go to jail. And rightfully so. I don’t understand how you can defend me, when it’s my fault you’ve been taking medication that makes you miserable for five years.”

“It’s not the medicine that makes me miserable, Marta. It’s all the stuff I’ve done. And that’s not your fault, not at all.”

“I made it possible. I knew you were special military ops, I may not have known what you were doing, but I sure as hell knew people were dying because of it. I can’t believe I never thought about any of this. I’m… I’m a terrible person.”

“Stop, please,” Aaron begged. “You’re not a terrible person, you’re amazing. You’re smart and strong… and you had to think you were helping somebody, right? With the science you were doing? You thought it was going to help people.”

“I… that’s… true.”

“And you know the people in charge of Outcome—they’re bad people. They manipulated you.”

“Are you sure they didn’t just pick me because I have no morals?”

“If you had no morals you wouldn’t be sad right now.”

“…Did I just lose an argument to you?”

“See, told you I’m not disabled,” he said smugly.

“Thank you.” Marta still wasn’t feeling completely at peace with her revelations, but Aaron had calmed her down at least enough that she could contemplate her moral fiber in silence.

~*~

Finally, hours after it had gotten dark, they stopped for the night. They were in Melbourne, a big enough town to be safe. After turning off the highway and driving a while, she pulled into a roach motel parking lot and shook Aaron awake.

“Would you come inside with me?” Aaron might not be much help strategizing like this, but he could be counted on to keep her safe physically. While she talked to the man at the front desk, he wrapped his arms around her waist and rested his chin sleepily on her shoulder. She enjoyed the feeling of it more than she should have, especially when he woke up a bit and turned his head to press his lips to her neck. Yes, that was something she definitely needed to be putting a stop to…

Mercifully, at that moment the clerk gave them their key, so she had an excuse to pull away from Aaron and head toward the room. Their room, which was… a single bed. Of course. Her luck. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Aaron, even in the state he was in currently, but it was temptation for both of them that she really didn’t need to deal with at that moment.

They showered and got ready for bed in relative silence, and then both crawled under the covers a bit shyly. She turned on her side, facing away from him, and tried to fall asleep quickly.

They had only been lying in the dark for a few minutes when Marta felt the touch she’d been waiting for, a brush of his fingers along her arm. She sighed.

“Aaron…”

“Can I hold you?”

“What?”

“Like this.” And without waiting for further invitation, he scooted right up behind her and pulled her against his chest, one arm wrapping innocently around her waist.

To her surprise, Marta felt a sudden release of tension on her next exhale, and without even meaning to, she found herself relaxing into Aaron’s hold.

“Okay,” she said softly, even though that was miles away from the protest she’d planned to make. After all, what was a little spooning between friends? And as long as she successfully ignored the feel of Aaron’s lips and stubble against the back of her neck, Marta felt herself drifting off more quickly than she’d thought possible.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which they fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God DAMN this was hard to write. I'm sorry it's taken so long, but I really hate writing angry scenes, and that's pretty much all this chapter is. But no worries, they get it sorted in the end. Mostly.
> 
> Also, when I said before that this would be over in about two chapters? Yeah, I think I kind of lied. I had a brainwave that's going to take at least on extra chapter to write out, hope no one minds.
> 
> And lastly, thanks so much for all the encouragement. You guys have all been wonderfully patient, and I really appreciate it. I hope this chapter is worth the wait.

Marta and Aaron woke up at almost exactly the same time the next morning. Wrapped up in each other as they were, there was no way to tell who began shifting first. After just a scarce few minutes, they were both wide awake, and Marta rolled over to look Aaron in the eye.

“Back with me?” she said.

Rather than answer, Aaron crashed his lips onto hers. Startled, she opened her mouth under his, but instead of venturing where he had not been invited, he pulled back.

“You. Are. Brilliant.” He punctuated each word with a short kiss.

“So that’s a yes?”

“Thanks to you.”

She smiled, and he smiled back, and for one short second, their world was good.

And then Aaron jumped to his feet.

“Come on, we need to leave. The sooner we get on our way the sooner we can get to Manila.”

Marta’s eyes flashed with a hint of concern, but she decided right now wasn’t the time. They could talk in the car.

~*~

They were packed and in the car in less than 15 minutes, but Marta waited until they had gotten onto the highway and had driven a ways before she approached the elephant in the room. Or, well, car.

“I didn’t lie to you, you know.”

“When?”

“The promise I made to you yesterday, that I would let you come down off your blues before I viraled you out.”

“Wh- Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Excuse me?”

“Marta, I appreciate you doing what you had to in order to get me to take my chems, but you know perfectly well that if we’re going to survive I’ve got to viral off.”

“Actually, I don’t know that, Aaron. It seems to me like we could pretty easily find a remote location to settle in for a while where they couldn’t find us. And we wouldn’t have to evade them forever, surely after a year they’d quit looking.”

“Quit looking? Quit looking for an asset that knows every detail of seventy-one of the country’s most covert operations and a specialist with in depth knowledge of multiple extremely illegal human experiments?”

“Well, okay, fair enough. But tell me we wouldn’t be able to find a remote enough place to hide.”

“No. Sooner or later, they would find us. And kill us. We could be the Swiss Family Robinson and they would still track us down eventually.”

“What about a boat? If we spent most of our time at sea, it’s not like they could comb the Pacific Ocean to find us.”

“No. No, Marta, stop it. Do you understand what you’re saying? You’re talking about spending the rest of your life in isolation with only an imbecilic oaf for company. You don’t want that.”

“It doesn’t matter what I _want_ , Aaron!” she very nearly shouted. “We’re talking about what’s right. You told me you don’t want the cognitive enhancements; I can’t just ignore that.”

“No,” said Aaron, jerking the steering wheel over and pulling to the side of the road. “Kenneth told you that. And maybe you didn’t notice, Marta, but Kenneth is _stupid_. You’re the one who said I wasn’t able to make decisions in that state, and now you want to take his choice over mine?”

“Well, he was here first.”

Aaron’s face flashed with intense anger, and then he opened his door and got out of the car, slamming it behind him. Marta followed quickly, finding him standing with his hands on the trunk, breathing heavily.

“It’s not like I’m a separate person that took over his body. I’m him, I’m just smarter. What you’re doing now is like saying I’m a sober person who’s only qualified to make decisions when I’m drunk.”

“No, it’s just the opposite. The chems are like a drug. No, scratch that, they _are_ a drug. Just because they’re enhancing instead of detracting doesn’t change the fact that they’re altering your natural state.” He started to interrupt her, but she plowed ahead. “Aaron, there’s only one thing I care about. Answer me this: are you unhappy living like this?”

Aaron let out a growl, and in a second he had her pinned between the car and his body.

“You ought to concern yourself less with my happiness and more with your own,” he whispered roughly, and then his mouth was on her neck, suckling the skin of her throat. Instinctually, she tilted her head back to give him access, her brain not quite caught up to the pleasurable sensations.

“You think I’d be able to do this to you if I regressed?” he said against her skin, the weight of him pressing against her from chest to thighs. “You think that stupid, fumbling, infantile version of me could ever make you feel like _this_?” He nipped at the sensitive spot under her ear and she let out a soft involuntary moan. She was trembling with fear and not a little arousal. Aaron seemed out of control, and she dimly knew if he’d step back and let her think for a moment that she’d be upset.

“Aaron…” she began, and he was kissing her fiercely. His hands were wandering, not anywhere too inappropriate, but one had moved under her shirt to caress the dip of her lower back, threatening to slip beneath the waistband of her pants. The other fisted in her hair as he continued to kiss her. She stood there as still as possible, not responding to his touches beyond the most involuntary of reactions.

“You have no idea how good I could make you feel,” he whispered as he went back to her neck, and with her mouth free, Marta spoke again.

“Aaron. Stop.”

And he did. Sort of. He took his mouth off her neck and leaned his forehead there instead, panting. The hand in her hair unclenched, but didn’t move. He was still pressed hard up against her, and she could feel the beginnings of a very impressive erection through his jeans. They stayed just like that for a few moments.

“Fuck,” he said, very softly, in a voice laden with regret. “I’m sorry, Marta.”

Usually, this would be the part where she told him it was fine, that he hadn’t gone too far. But it wasn’t fine. He’d scared her. And he still hadn’t let her go.

“You know,” she said, forcing her voice to be as cold as possible, “It’s funny, you’ve been so careful not to coerce me into sex, but it seems like you certainly aren’t above _using_ sex to coerce me into other things that I’m uncomfortable with.”

He released her like he’d been burned.

“I’m trying to save my own goddamn life here, and yours too, so forgive me for not upholding your moral standards.”

“You have yet to convince me that we couldn’t hide safely.”

“Only because you’re too caught up in your own _guilt trip_ ,” he spat the words disdainfully, “to listen to sense. I am sorry you feel bad about your involvement in Outcome, Marta, even though, as previously mentioned, the chems _saved our lives_. But it’s _done_ , okay? What the hell gives you the right to tell me I can’t stay this way now that I’m here?”

“I’m the one that made you this way.”

“And does that mean I should just bow to your wishes? Not question your authority, just fall on my knees and pray that my benevolent creator deems me worthy to live,  is that what you want?” He pushed away from her and knelt, arms spread wide, his posture a contrast to the hard, angry look on his face. “Do you want me to worship you, Marta? Because I will. I will beg and supplicate for your favor. Tell me what you want from me.”

“Stop it,” she begged, close to tears now. “You know I didn’t mean it like that; I don’t want anything from you.”

When he saw the anguish on her face, something inside Aaron broke. He stood up and crossed the distance between them in one step, gathering her gently into his arms. She immediately turned her face into his shoulder and began crying.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I didn’t mean it. I understand where you’re coming from, but you have to see it my way.” There was a pause as he gathered his thoughts and searched for the most persuasive thing he could say.

“You’d be killing me,” he whispered desperately, the words ghosting over her skin. “Lobotomizing me. Just because that’s how I was born, doesn’t mean that’s how I’m supposed to be.”

“I know. I _know_ ,” she replied gently. “But aren’t you unhappy living like this? All that guilt all the time?”

“That isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” he mumbled.

“What?”

“I mean, the guilt isn’t… I don’t want it gone.”

“Why not? Don’t you want to be able to forget—“

“No!” Aaron pushed back and turned away from her sharply, and Marta was shocked to catch a hint of tears in his eyes.

They were silent for a minute, Aaron standing with his back to her, no sound but the occasional rush of a car hurtling down the highway.

Then he spoke again, roughly: “Kareema Safar. 34, wife of Nasim Safar, a Syrian Awali governor.  She had two children, ages 3 and 5. Her death was blamed on Sunni terrorism, leading to a significant increase in support for American intervention in Syria.” He turned to her, his face a mask of anguish and regret. “Don’t you see? If I forget about her… if I forget about any of them… it’s like killing them all over again. It’s right that I should feel guilty. I _am_ guilty. Ignorance may be bliss, but I don’t deserve bliss, Marta. Not after everything I’ve done.”

“Aaron…” she whispered. And then, because she had no words, she pulled him into a tight embrace. By the time he had stopped clinging to her, she knew exactly what needed to be said.

“Am I at fault for my part in Outcome, Aaron? Should I feel guilty because I’m the one that enabled you?”

“No! No, of course not. I told you yesterday, you were manipulated. You thought you were doing good, helping people… oh. I see your point.”

“Good.”

“But it’s still not the same! I killed people. Actually, physically pulled a trigger and killed them.”

“I did too,” she whispered.

“What, that security guard in Sterisyn? It was self-defense, that doesn’t—“

“No, I mean, with my work at Outcome. There used to be nine program participants. Counting you, only six are still alive. One was killed in the field, but the other two… viral genetic alteration isn’t really an exact science, you know. It’s very hit and miss. Most of the misses don’t have serious consequences, but occasionally…” Marta was starting to shake. She was losing it again. What had begun as an attempt to pull Aaron’s focus away from his own guilt was spiraling out of her control. “And at the time I didn’t mind too much, because I assumed-“ she gulped, then sobbed. “I assumed they knew what they were getting into. But they probably didn’t, not really, and I killed them.”

“It was an accident,” he reminded her.

“It was recklessness. It was a disregard for life that sickens me to think of now. If you’re guilty of the bad things that you did under Outcome’s influence, then so am I. If you had the chance to relieve me of this guilt, would you take it?”

“Of course, yes.”

“And now you see where I stand.”

Aaron was silent for a long minute, staring at her.

“I still don’t want to die,” he said, in a broken voice.

“I know. And, in a totally, horribly selfish way, I want you to stay like this. But it’s not right. Not when Kenneth doesn’t want it. And I don’t know how to convince him to consent; he’s very difficult to argue with.”

“So it has to be one of us, and you’re saying it has to be me because he’s harder to reason with? How is that fair?”

“It’s not. I’m sorry. I just don’t know what to say to him.”

There was a pause, and suddenly Aaron jerked his head up, realization in his eyes.

“But I do. I’m him, I know how he thinks, I can help you. We can figure it out, everything you need to say to convince him to say yes.”

Marta eyed him doubtfully. “Do you think we could?”

“Between the two of us, I have no doubt. Come on,” he said, suddenly alight with the energy of someone with new purpose. He hurried to his side of the car and got in, Marta following suit. “I’ve got one more blue, which gives us about 36 hours to get this figured out and get to the Philippines at the same time. Easy.”

As he pulled onto the highway again, Marta found herself wishing she had Aaron’s confidence.


End file.
